One year ago, Mikhail Baryshnikov threw a cocktail party at Tiffany & Co. to publicize American Ballet Theatre's lavish plans for its fiftieth anniversary. Six months ago, Baryshnikov stated that he would leave his post as ABT's artistic director immediately after the climax of the anniversary celebrations, the company's 1990 season in New York City. And three months ago, he abruptly, and angrily, announced that he was resigning "as of today" - the result of a fiery dispute with his board of directors over the troupe's finances and the future of his chief assistant.
Ironically, Baryshnikov had been toasted at the Tiffany party with the wish that he would lead ABT through its second fifty years. Grinning uneasily at the thought of bearing this responsibility until the age of ninety-two, Baryshnikov had replied, "I'm not sure about the next fifty."
The former Kirov Ballet star had directed ABT since 1980, or for almost one-fifth of its history, so his abrupt departure was no small matter. For newer dancegoers, those who began attending ballet during the last decade, Baryshnikov was ABT. His resignation threw into disarray the orderly search for a successor that the one-year notice given last June was supposed to ensure. It clouded the first months on the job of the company's new executive director, Jane Hermann, formerly the director of presentations at the Metropolitan Opera House, with whom Baryshnikov had locked horns over his assistant, Charles France. And one of the underlying causes of Baryshiknov's rash retreat - the troupe's reported one million dollar deficit - remains on ongoing problem.
An Exotic Import
When Ballet Theatre, as it was then known, was formed in 1939, ballet was considered an exotic import. Although performances of ballet had been presented in America since the eighteenth century, and American classic dancers of international renown were not unknown - Philadelphia's primly named Mary Ann Lee danced successfully in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century - there was no tradition of ballet in the land.
Anna Pavlova made her New York debut in 1910, and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, with its European fantasy repertoire and its Russian-named (if not Russian-born) dancers, toured the States beginning in the 1930s, giving many Americans their first taste of ballet. But choreographer George Balanchine's attempts to assemble a native company during the thirties foundered, leaving his colleague Lincoln Kirstein to complain bitterly that Americans thought "Russian ballet" was one word.
Ballet Theatre's roots actually reach back to 1926, when Mikhail Mordkin, a Russian émigré who had been Pavlova's partner, established a small troupe at his studio in New York City. Lucia Chase, an American girl from a wealthy background, studied with Mordkin, and out of her love for the art grew the company that gave its first performance on January 11, 1940. Ballet Theatre was advertised as presenting the greatest ballets of all time. Chase and Richard Pleasant, who had managed Mordkin's company, envisioned a troupe that would present the best works by a variety of choreographers. The dancers included Patricia Bowman, Karen, Conrad, Nana Goliner Annabelle Lyon, Hugh Laing, William Dollar, Leon Danielian, and Donald Sadler. Later, in part because of the outbreak of World War II and in part because of some shrewd
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