A 32-year-old stage number that was long too hot for Europe got its U.S. premiere in Manhattan last week, and hardly anybody raised an eyebrow. The work: a nightmarish ballet fantasy entitled The Miraculous Mandarin, set to the 1919 music of Hungarian Bela Bartok. Its main characters: a prostitute and a Chinese mandarin whose love for her is stronger than death.
Because of the theme and its lurid treatment, Bartok's own Budapest banned Mandarin until 1946. Manhattan's City Ballet Company was under no such inhibition. City Center cast sinewy Melissa Hayden...
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