Word: ballerina
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...British Schoolmaster Thomas Ashe was a flop as a ladies' man, and knew it. His nose was bulbous, his mustache like a thicket, and his eyes were crossed. But when he is crowding 49, they suddenly blaze with fresh fervor at the sight of an 18-year-old ballerina named Shala Delisle. He sees in her "the meaning and import of my life, my un-climbed peak, my terra incognita, my uncharted sea, my route to the Blessed Isles." Ignited with a Galahad-pure flame of romance. Ashe chucks everything to pursue "the most beautiful woman in the world...
...evening's ballet was Romeo and Juliet, danced in settings of overwhelming -if old-fashioned-grandeur and verisimilitude. The dancing, to the Prokofiev score and with few differences from the ballet film now showing in the U.S.. was heavily larded with emotion-laden pantomime. But fragile Ballerina Galina Ulanova danced lightly as a wind-wafted feather in spite of her 46 years. Most critics were ecstatic. The Times critic described her as "now like a flame on the ground, now like a flame leaping in the air." Wrote the News Chronicle: "Her arms and hands raised in flight...
...turn. Before the curtain went up on the third act of Napoli, the ballet master pointed out our places. We stood just behind a row of ballerinas draped along the edge of the stage. One of the group twirled the end of a rope near a ballerina who was still stationing herself. In a slightly hurt voice and in uncertain English she pouted "a-a. .pl-eese." Four of us practiced pulling a cart decorated with flowers across the stage. This was to be the finale. "Now just relax ourselves," said the ballet master...
...Deesses was choreographed by Robert Joffrey, a young and talented dance creator who in this instance failed to get his message across. The ballet could have been very funny, since Joffrey took the standard set-up of one male and three girls--starting off together, then each little ballerina getting her chance to dance alone with the man, and finally the latter liking his three girls so much that he keeps them all--and apparently meant to lampoon it. But somehow the number, danced by Lupe Serrano, Ruth Ann Koesum, Catherine Horn, and Scott Douglas, was just corny...
...next number was the traditional Pas de Deux, this time from the third act of Coppelia. Intended to give the prima ballerina and danseur noble a chance to demonstrate their technical virtuosity, it succeeded only in showing that Miss Kaye and Kriza, though excellent dancers are not suited for such restraining numbers...