Ballet from the Ashes

It was 5 a.m. when the phone rang in the Cannes hotel room of Jean Cerrone, company manager of Manhattan's touring American Ballet Theatre. The news: a twelve-ton truck carrying most of the company's gear had gone up in flames. Cerrone mumbled "Merci," went back to sleep, 15 minutes later woke up again in a horrified double take. By the time he got to the scene of the fire, all the company's wardrobe trunks had been destroyed, along with scenery and props for twelve ballets, plus orchestra scores for four. Total damage, mostly coveted by insurance: about $400,000. That was two weeks ago. Last week the ballet company put on a scheduled performance at the Brussels World Exhibition--after seven days of international rescue operations.

In the Pouch. As soon as news of the fire reached London, the Royal Ballet's Prima Ballerina Margot Fonteyn sent her own Black Swan costume winging to Ballet Theatre's Prima Ballerina Nora Kaye. Covent Garden set 15 girls apressing a pile of old Sylphides costumes. The British Festival Ballet's Anton Dolin, a Ballet Theatre alumnus, sent whatever odds and ends he could spare. Ballet Theatre's Erik Bruhn phoned fellow Danes in Copenhagen, who rushed to pack Sylphides and Graduation Ball trappings (the vacationing director had to be run to ground for an O.K.). French Dancers Pierre Le Cote and Claude Bessy appeared in Cannes with tutus and tunics. A cowed secretary at London's Ballet Rambert was talked out of a Giselle score; a second score was produced by an operative who dug up a key to Brussels' shuttered opera house. In Cannes, meanwhile, dancers, stranded with only the clothes they had worn on the night of the fire, rehearsed in bikinis while their laundered wardrobes dried out.

Finally moving on to Brussels via Paris, the ballet troupers scoured Parisian shops for all the shoes, Pancake Make-Up, eye shadow, nets, Kleenex, false hair, powder puffs and bobby pins they could carry. Wardrobe Master Leslie Copeland flew to London to buy white shirts for the men. Upon his arrival in Brussels, well-heeled Director Lucia Chase and company members cut off the incongruous pockets. The U.S. embassy in London scissored red tape to arrange immediate funds for air-freighting costumes, put the Rambert Giselle score in a Brussels-bound diplomatic pouch. In Brussels itself, one especially vital consignment arrived at the airport with such urgency that suspicious customs men detained the package. A Ballet Theatre official warned hoarsely: "If we don't get those athletic supporters soon, I'm going to call the American ambassador."

Curtain Up. Day before the Brussels opening, Music Director Samuel Krachmalnick set about rehearsing a pickup orchestra of phlegmatic Flemings. A Brussels milliner, working from a photograph, in six hours ran up helmets for The Combat. At the scheduled time, in the U.S. Pavilion theater, the curtain rose on the Ballet Theatre. The first work on the bill was Theme and Variations, but variations predominated: girls in Sylphides tutus and men in tights, which had just arrived from New York, leaped and twirled against a backdrop from Gala Performance.

At later performances five girls, bereft of wigs but required to appear as Greek goddesses, sprayed their hair silver, washed it out during the ten-minute intermission, returned in the next number as winsome peasant maids. One painted her slippers white for Paean, minutes later pink for Giselle. There was little evidence to suggest to the audience that the ballet had risen from ashes. Wrote La Libre Belgique: "The dancers of this excellent company provided us with a spectacle in which ballet [became] poetic language."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.