Three-Week Fling

This spring, for the first time in its lively three-year career, the New York City Ballet Co. finished a season (February-March 1951) in the black. Chairman Morton Baum called his executive committee together, told the good news and got approval for an extra season. This week, at Manhattan's City Center, the ballet was ending its three-week special run. Red ink was dripping into the ledgers again, but balletomanes had had a look at three new works:

The Cage (by Jerome Robbins; music by Igor Stravinsky), the most important of the premieres, tells a story at once terrible and absorbing. The dancers seemed to represent female insects who introduce the young, forlorn Novice (Nora Kaye) to the mating rite and to the harsh insect code which requires the death of the male partner. Robbins' savage but striking ballet caused some seat-squirming in the audience. The big question: Is it really a tale of insects, or a parable of life among human beings?

Capriccio Brillant (by George Balanchine; music by Mendelssohn) is an elegant bit of fluff designed mainly for Balanchine's top dancers, Maria Tallchief and Andre Eglevsky, who present a brisk, polished "improvisation" on the music.

Cakewalk (by Ruthanna Boris; music by Louis Gottschalk-Hershy Kay) takes off with wit and imagination on the traditional American minstrel show, complete with interlocutor, end men, magician, and a high-stepping Cakewalk of the '90s.

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