Attitudes.

A LITTLE MORE than a half-century ago, a young but quite extraordinarily perceptive critic--myself in fact--in his first book, Ballet in Britain since the War, wrote: "One of the most significant differences between ballet today and ballet the day before yesterday is the rise of nationalism. When Diaghilev first came to Western Europe, his company represented a purely Russian interpretation of the ballet tradition. In time this became international in its influences; recently we have had a return to nationalism in ballet. We go to French ballet, American ballet, and British ballet, all with marked racial characteristics." Apart from the innocently clumsy use of the word racial, was that really true then? And is it true now?

THIS CONCEPT of nationalism in ballet was based on sober fact. At file turn of the nineteenth century, ballet as a serious art form had virtually died in Europe except in Russia and in the then-cultural backwater of Denmark. When ballet made what might be called its comeback, it made it through Serge Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, which from 1909 to 1929 transformed the way dance was regarded in the Western world. Also, despite such fascinating aberrants as the Ballets Suedois, ballet was regarded as distinctly Russian. Even after Diaghilev's death the various remnants of his company regrouped with varying success, but still managed to dominate classical dance in Western Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Ballet spoke with a "Rooshion" accent, which was nonetheless marked for being occasionally phony.

For the development of national ballets World War II came at an oddly opportune time. As far as dance was concerned it served to isolate the already weakened battalions of the old Ballets Russes, and enabled indigenous ballet to prosper in both Britain and the United States. Note that I said indigenous, not national. That might be a difference that that young wiseacre critic fifty or so years ago failed to recognize.

IN THOSE DAYS the idea of a national ballet was allied with national music--folk music, and by extension, folk dance. The original impact of Diaghilev in Paris, London, and elsewhere was caught up with what we pale-livered Westerners thought of as Russia's barbaric exoticism. Yes, of course, people noticed Les Sylphides and Giselle, but what really stirred them, making their fashionable salons quake so deliciously, were Prince Igor, Schehdrazade, L'Oiseau de Feu, and Le Sacre du Printemps. Here, it was felt, was Russian ballet's true gift to the world.

When American ballet first came to London, most of the critics welcomed de Mille's cowboys and Robbins's sailors but were far less attentive to the architectonic grandeur of Balanchine. Americana was rather what Europe expected. Ninette de Valois still had hankerings for a chauvinistic British tradition, with ballets based on the prints of William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson, and even invited Leonide Massine to create, with dire results, a Scottish bal]et, Donald of the Burthens.

Of course, Balanchine got it right when he said: "First a school." A national ballet is a school, a style, a way of dancing. It has nothing to do with folklore or ethnography. We are starting to learn, it may not have much to do with nationality. Yes, Russian ballet is still full of Russians, Australian ballet is still full of Australians, and, strangely enough considering European employment laws, French ballet is still full of French. But in the rest of the world, almost all of the companies, especially at the principal level, hire according to talent rather than passport.

LOOKING AT a list of American Ballet Theatre principals, only [our out of eighteen are American-born. New York City Ballet fares rather belier in the jingoist stakes, with only six foreign-born principals out of twenty-two. As for Britain's Royal Ballet, Dame Ninette perhaps would be agast to discover that out of seventeen principals, only two were born in jolly old Britain.

Yet national style is not quite so simple, or simplistic, as it may seem. A company once as inbred as the Royal Danish Ballet now has six out of fifteen principals born far from Denmark. Yet it still looks like the Royal Danish Ballet. Again, you would have to be very dance-insensitive not to see the wide difference of style between NYCB and ABT, and this has nothing to do with the nationality/of the dancers.

Recently at a gala performance in New York, I saw Romaniau-bom Alina Cojocaru and Danish-born Johan Kobborg dance the Black Swan pas de deux. They seemed perfect examples of the Royal Ballet style: modest, Ashtonian, exquisite, and elegant, the kind of dancing we once associated with Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell. So, as far as national styles are concerned, it may be that as the old song from Cy Coleman's musical Seesaw suggested, "It's not where you start, it's where you finish." In the final count, company style is an attitude, not a nationality.

Senior Consulting Editor Clive Barnes, who covers dance and theater for The New York Post, has contributed to DANCE MAGAZINE since 1956.