Word: babil
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...Jean Babilée is a dancer U.S. balletomanes have been hearing about, in brief flashes from Paris, since the end of the war. The first flash was that he could leap as no one since Nijinsky. Then came a tale of an astonishing physical feat: in Jean Cocteau's Le Jeune Homme et la Mort (TIME, Dec. 9, 1946), Babilée hung by his neck on a gallows for a full minute, with no more extra support than he could get from wrapping one arm around a pillar...
...Manhattan last week, a U.S. audience found first-hand that the news about France's best male dancer was not exaggerated. For his first guest appearance with Ballet Theater, mop-haired little (5 ft. 5 in.) Dancer Babilée, 27, chose the ballet which first brought him fame, Le Jeune Homme. His role: that of a young artist who is abandoned by his sweetheart. In the violent, Apache-like dances that the ballet calls for, he revolved around his taunting sweetheart (beautifully danced by pert Nathalie Philippart, his wife) with the intensity of an angry bird. His tremendous...
...Beethoven's "Pathetique" piano sonata-and they were married shortly after. He "detests" classical duets-"too rigid, too formal. I always hate my partner." He particularly detests Nijinsky's famous Le Spectre de la Rose. "Even if you dance it well, everyone says, 'Oh, Nijinsky!": Both Babilées prefer comic or dramatic ballets, "where we can act a part and play to each other...
...their first trip to the U.S., the Babilées have been busy taking in Broadway musicomedies ("So strong, such a sense of theater!"). The irrepressible Jean is also shopping for a cowboy suit, complete with six-shooter-perhaps to wear while roaring around on one of the two motorcycles he keeps in Paris...
...Paris last week, even without music, Choreographer David Lichine's ballet The Creation, danced by the Ballets des Champs-Elysées, was the kind of new sensation that Parisians save their loudest bravos for.* Part of the cheers were for France's best male dancer, Jean Babilée-and a new star The Creation had created overnight: 17-year-old, almond-eyed Leslie Caron, a half American, half French girl who had never even seen a ballet until after the war. (Leslie's mother, Margaret Petit, once danced in New York...