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...
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