Success Story

Up, down & across Europe pranced half a hundred young Americans of the New York City Ballet. Few natives (and few touring Americans) had heard of the company, and audiences expected only an oddity. But every performance ended in a storm of applause; houses were packed, the corps de ballet learned to freeze in rigid positions for long minutes while the soloists bowed.

Only the press nursed its dyspepsia. Said a French critic, chauvinistically eying the foreign names in the cast: "It is no more American than the Ballet Russe is Russian."* The near perfection of the corps was a source of amazement everywhere, but reviewers could not help taking the edge off their enthusiasm: it was not perfect.

Director Balanchine's European advisers clucked when he scheduled jazzy, lowbrow Pied Piper for decorous Barcelona. But the Spaniards gustily swallowed every ounce of humor. Jerome Robbins' controversial The Cage was temporarily banned in The Hague because of its unusual theme of spiderlike viricide, but few Dutch hairs were turned when it was finally performed. Audiences almost everywhere agreed that one ballet was tops: oldfashioned, toe-tipping Swan Lake.

If Europeans liked the company, the dancers returned the feeling with interest. Offstage they enthusiastically pursued the gourmet trail, gawked at the sights, suffered the usual tourist complaints (sniffles, upset stomachs). They all put on some weight, and thereby drew a rebuke from Purist Balanchine: "Some of them have become so fat it is difficult to look at them."

The company liked to dance in Zurich because the traditionally critical audience gave it its best reception; in Paris because "it was Paris," and Florence because the stage was so good. They suffered more than the usual number of sprains, and used up more than $10,000 worth of toe slippers on rough stages elsewhere. In Barcelona they found the life expectancy of a pair of slippers was 20 minutes.

Last week, after five months abroad, the New York City Ballet wound up its tour at the Berlin Festival, won the expected show-stopping applause and unexpectedly high critical praise. Wrote Critic Erwin Kroll in Der Tag: "What an art, what a harmony of movement, what a cultural achievement!" A lot of Berliners thought the tour was better cultural propaganda than a year of broadcasts.

* Director George Balanchine was born in Russia, but is a U.S. citizen. Ballerina Tanaquil Leclercq was born in Paris, but moved to New York City as a child. Star Maria Tallchief is more American than most: she is part Indian. The corps is almost entirely from New York.

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