High Jumper frorn Paris

Jean Babilee is a dancer U.S. balletomanes have been hearing about, in brief flashes from Paris, since the end of the war. The first flash was that he could leap as no one since Nijinsky. Then came a tale of an astonishing physical feat: in Jean Cocteau's Le Jeune Homme et la Mort (TIME, Dec. 9, 1946), Babilee hung by his neck on a gallows for a full minute, with no more extra support than he could get from wrapping one arm around a pillar.

In Manhattan last week, a U.S. audience found first-hand that the news about France's best male dancer was not exaggerated. For his first guest appearance with Ballet Theater, mop-haired little (5 ft. 5 in.) Dancer Babilee, 27, chose the ballet which first brought him fame, Le Jeune Homme. His role: that of a young artist who is abandoned by his sweetheart. In the violent, Apache-like dances that the ballet calls for, he revolved around his taunting sweetheart (beautifully danced by pert Nathalie Philippart, his wife) with the intensity of an angry bird. His tremendous leaps, over chairs and tables, were sudden darts into the air. Even with its hanging scene, Le Jeune Homme (danced incongruously to the Bach C Minor Passacaglia) was no great ballet. But the fans found plenty of excitement in both the Babilees.

Son of a Paris physician, Jean has been dancing almost half his life; too high-strung and restless for school, at 13 he was a "little rat" in the Paris Opera Ballet. He left the ballet to fight with the Maquis during the war. At war's end he joined the small Soirees de la Danse, later the Ballet des Champs Elysees. He designed his first ballet for Nathalie--a duet to Beethoven's "Pathetique" piano sonata--and they were married shortly after. He "detests" classical duets--"too rigid, too formal. I always hate my partner." He particularly detests Nijinsky's famous Le Spectre de la Rose. "Even if you dance it well, everyone says, 'Oh, Nijinsky!": Both Babilees prefer comic or dramatic ballets, "where we can act a part and play to each other."

On their first trip to the U.S., the Babilees have been busy taking in Broadway musicomedies ("So strong, such a sense of theater!"). The irrepressible Jean is also shopping for a cowboy suit, complete with six-shooter--perhaps to wear while roaring around on one of the two motorcycles he keeps in Paris.

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