Word: ballets
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Communist Russia has always been a proud patron of the ballet, possibly because one of the Bolshevik Revolution's opening oratorical guns was fired from a ballerina's love nest...
...great & good friend, certainly one of the best dancers of all time and one of two ever to bear the lofty title of prima ballerina assoluta.* In Berlin last week, another ballerina was given that title by sentimental oldtimers: Galina Ulanova, 44, the darling of the Soviet Ballet...
Parisians, recalling the magic of the name "Ballets Russes" from the Diaghilev days, were excitedly preparing to look at the first performance in Western Europe by a sizable (50 members) Soviet ballet troupe. But the day before the opening, news came that Dienbienphu had fallen to Moscow's Communist allies in Indo-China. While defeated on the military front and retreating on Geneva's diplomatic front, the French stiffened on the ballet front...
Government officers heard that a group of Foreign Legionnaires had taken a block of seats in order to break up the Soviet ballet's opening, and prudently decided to postpone the event. This gave them time to consider their dilemma: on the one hand, to cancel the spectacle would be diplomatically discourteous; on the other, it would be better to be inhospitable than to offer armed hospitality, with police inside the theater...
Then Premier Laniel made up his mind, announced that the Russian ballet would be postponed indefinitely. The press, and not alone the left-wing papers, jumped on Laniel's decision ("Your gesture is not French"). It was the first victory France had won against Communism in a long time-and few Frenchmen were proud of it. At week's end the troupe trooped to the airport, leaving behind it an accusing statement by the Russian dancers' Director Tchoulaki."Faced with this unfavorable attitude on the part of the French government," it read, "the Russian government has decided...