May 30, 2008

What Makes American Ballet American?

By MARTHA ULLMAN WEST

A festival suggests some answers

Sixteen women costumed in long, pale tutus stand motionless as the curtain rises. Then, like water poured from a pitcher, and moving as one dancer, they curve their arms, shade their eyes, and open their feet to first position, heel to heel, toes turned out, in one of neoclassical ballet's most beautiful moments.

Is George Balanchine's "Serenade," set to Tchaikovsky's Serenade in C for String Orchestra, Op. 48, and the first work the Russian

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