The Great Leap Forward

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Dance has also arrived in suburbia, where leotards and toe shoes are beginning to replace the piano as a culture symbol. Manhattan has 70 dance schools, greater Washington, D.C., has 60. Says one Manhattan teacher, surveying the proliferating schools: "They're like bookies —there's one in every basement." Each September, when Balanchine's School of American Ballet holds auditions, the line of hopefuls stretches around the block. The few who are accepted are properly proud and even a little haughty. Says Nanette Glushak, 17, of Manhattan: "We saw a movie of Pav lova the other day, and I can tell you that she was pretty bad. I don't think she'd get accepted here today. She just wasn't good enough."

Sissy Stigma. Nijinsky, though, might have had a good chance. While the U.S. is developing more female dancers than it can productively use, there is still a dearth of male talent. Unlike Denmark, where women curtsy in the street when a ranking male dancer passes by, or Russia, where Bolshoi stars are accorded the same respect given to cosmonauts, the stigma of sissy still lingers in the U.S. Many dance schools offer free scholarships to any boy who will don tights; others patrol athletic clubs to recruit prospects. But the climate is changing: the ratio of girls to boys taking up dance, once 50 to 1, is now only 15 to 1. Even more important, the percentage of homosexuals is diminishing too. "When I first started," admits Dancer Paul Sutherland, "about 90% of the men were queer; now the ratio is about 60 to 40."

Feet in Toe Shoes. One nagging problem is, as always, money. Despite growing national interest, most of the 40 or 50 professional companies in the U.S. are direly pressed to meet their weekly expenses of $10,000 to $100,000. Production costs are prohibitive; the American Ballet Theater, which carries 58 dancers, plus 38 musicians and technicians on tour, plays to packed houses but still loses $10,000 every week it sets its feet on stage. Just to keep those feet in Capezio toe shoes ($9 a pair) costs $1,000 a week.

As a result, the history of many troupes has been distinction verging on extinction. Fortunately, the Ford Foundation had a better idea. Since 1963, it has given a total of nearly $9,000,000 to major dance groups, while the National Endowment for the Arts has divvied up another $1,000,000. Says National Arts Council President Roger Stevens: "Dance needs money more than any of the other arts. A writer needs pencil and paper, a painter needs canvas and paints. But a choreographer needs bodies, and they have to be paid." They are not paid very well; while a top Balanchine star such as Villella or Melissa Hayden can make $20,000 a year, the girls in the New York City's corps de ballet average $7,000. Top pay in the Joffrey troupe is $10,000. Most of the ballet masters see some sort of state or Government aid—a commonplace in Europe—as their only prospect for solvency.

Total Cinema? In spite of its financial problems, insists Joffrey Business Manager Ewing, "the dance world is by far the most creative of all the performing arts in America today." Ewing's boast is not just hyperbole. Last year there were at least 100 premieres of new dance works in the U.S.