The Great Leap Forward

(2 of 9)

Significantly, the new mod movement in dance is a phenomenon that can be labeled MADE IN THE U.S.A. "American dance," admits Benjamin Harkarvy, co-director of the lively and inventive Netherlands Ballet, "is the most advanced and richest in choreographic development in the world today." With rare exceptions, Europe's great and historic ballet companies still operate pretty much in the shadow of Petipa and Fokine, and when they dare something new, they almost invariably look westward across the Atlantic for inspiration.

In particular, they look to the prime movers of the first generation of dance rebels: George Balanchine and Martha Graham. A onetime dancer with Diaghilev, Balanchine (TIME cover, Jan. 25, 1954) not only built the New York City Ballet into one of the world's great ensembles but also shaped a new style of classicism that blended traditional movement with the exuberance of the American spirit. Far to the artistic left, Pennsylvania-born Martha Graham almost singlehanded molded the modern dance, in which carefully formulated postures of ballet gave way to expressive writhings of existential psychodrama.

The new concept of dance as total theater is an eclectic hybrid: it borrows what it needs from classical ballet, modern dance, jazz, rock 'n' roll and pop art —and goes on from there. In recent years, it has found its expression in scores of versatile companies: not only the Joffrey dancers, but also the Harkness Ballet, the troupes founded by Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, Alwin Nikolais, Merce Cunningham and others (see adjacent color pages). Uncommitted to principle or precedent, these organizations—and the dancer-choreographers behind them—have begun to have an impact on their masters. Balanchine's newest ballet, Metastaseis & Pithoprakta (TIME, Jan. 26), for example, is as strikingly original as anything that the new troupes do.

Jumping for Joy. What makes the boldness of the new choreography possible is the exhilarating brio of American dancers. Envious European ballet masters concede that in terms of physique and stamina they are the world's best. The girls are lean and leggy, with an air of windswept prairie about them. The boys are tall, sturdy-limbed, and have the athletic bearing of flanker backs. Their attack is clean, crisp, and as wide open as the Yucca Flat. They jump for joy. Arcing skyward, legs extended and arms pointing the course, they seem to be saying "Wheee!"

In the wings, urging dancers to higher leaps and wilder arabesques, is a corps of inventive and unfettered choreographers, for whom dance is not so much an art as a way of life. Robert Jeffrey, 38, for example, has been in love with dance since he was nine. Christened Abdullah Jaffa Anver Bey Khan by his immigrant Afghan father and Italian mother, he started taking ballet lessons as a strengthening way to ward off asthma attacks. At 18, convinced that dance was his profession, he hopped a ride to Manhattan, and outstepped 200 candidates for a job as soloist with Roland Petit's Ballet de Paris.