(2 of 10)
When Rudi came roaring out of the East, Margot was fading. Now, fired by his inspiration, she has risen to new heights. That their hour onstage must be so brief—at best, she has perhaps only three more years of dancing left —only heightens the tragic beauty of it all. The principals themselves are not untouched. Their curtain calls have become ballets in miniature. They are always the same. Margot lovingly plucks a flower from her bouquet, tenderly puts it to her lips, and with a deep curtsy presents it to Rudi. He in turn humbly sinks to one knee and kisses her hand for one long, frozen moment. This brings a shower of flowers from the galleries and often a laurel wreath, which Rudi solemnly places on his head. Then they stand there with arms outstretched until the stage around them is blanketed with blossoms.
Neglected Child. Nureyev and Fonteyn have danced together some 170 times, and rarely before anything but sold-out houses. The night before tickets go on sale, hundreds of eager Britons set up camp outside the Covent Garden box office, where prices are listed in three categories: matinees, evenings, and Nureyev-Fonteyn. By noon there is not a single ticket to be had in all of London, except from scalpers, and they command up to $420. It is the same wherever Nureyev and Fonteyn go. At the inaugural gala for President Johnson in January, featuring the biggest names in the entertainment world, Nureyev and Fonteyn's pas de deux from Le Corsaire won the longest ovation of the evening. As one critic crassly but correctly put it: "They are the hottest little team in show biz."
As such, they have attracted scores of people to the ballet who would not know a pirouette from a pratfall. They symbolize, in fact, a major resurgence of interest in the dance, long culture's most neglected child. A decade ago, there were only 75 dance companies in the U.S.; today there are 225, amateur, semiprofessional and professional. In New York, for instance, the Royal Ballet was preceded by a four-week season mounted by the American Ballet Theatre, and will run concurrently with a five-week season of Balanchine's New York City Ballet. Washington now has its own ballet company, and Boston, which in 1929 banned females from dancing "in legs bare," this year welcomed its first professional ballet group with a sold-out season. Last month Los Angeles launched its first resident ballet company with an appropriately spectacular champagne gala.
Frosty Abstracts. This renaissance has come in two parts, at least so far as the U.S. is concerned. Parties to the first part have been the postwar invasion of the classic Russian companies, along with visits from the genial Royal Danish Ballet and the Royal Ballet itself, all leaving their homelands for the first time and demonstrating to the U.S. just what a combination of muscular brio and enchanted spectacle the classical ballet can be.