Ballet: Not Quite It

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Chance to Dance. But is it a great ballet? The steps are modern and functional, with never a tour jeté, never an entrechat or a grand fouetté. Manhattan first-nighters, who sat through its half-hour length with scarcely a rippling interruption of applause, demanded 16 curtain calls, with Jacqueline Kennedy clapping energetically enough for two. Nureyev's magnetic personality demands an audience's attention. In Swan Lake, he disclosed some of his enormous technical facility, and in Marguerite, with less chance to dance, he demonstrated that he can also act. But so much of his talked-of talent is yet to be revealed that his U.S. fans still cannot judge whether Nureyev is indeed, as advertised, the first worthy successor to Nijinsky.