On Tuesday night, April 18, before a glittering capacity audience at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, Moscow’s Moiseyev Dance Company opened its second American visit with what the next morning’s Times headlined as a “Triumph.” “What a marvelous evening it turned out to be!” exclaimed critic John Martin. “This time [the Moiseyev company] has quite surpassed itself [and] brings us now a program of deeper tone, richer substance…. But why go on? It is a magnificent troupe all around. And an incomparable evening.” Mr. Martin’s colleagues were at one with his judgment. The World-Telegram’s Louis Biancolli saw the audience “completely won over,” “enraptured”; all “went wild with delight.”
The evening’s triumph did not end with the fall of the Metropolitan’s curtain. At the St. Regis Roof—New York’s most expensive nightclub in its most fashionable hotel—impresario Sol Hurok was host to the Moiseyev cast and a galaxy of New York guests. “The whole deal,” wrote columnist Frank Farrell, “was exactly like going to your first junior prom…. Olga Moiseyev, daughter of the ‘boss, was the most popular teenage partner with all age groups, including mine. Her dad… made a lot of popularity points… last night by dancing with all our U. S. dolls.”
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