Ballet

Last fortnight Vienna beheld a street parade of floats representing all manner of trades and industries. Around and among the slow-moving floats pranced and danced umbrella makers, luggage manufacturers, butchers, bakers, florists, plumbers, executing dance figures appropriate to their trades. Specially composed music, tunes of historical significance, were recorded on phonograph discs, broadcast from a central station, picked up and amplified on the floats. Author of the spectacle was Rudolf von Laban, Austrian painter, philosopher, choreographer. He was demonstrating his point that dancing lends itself as well as any of the arts to the purposes of commerce.

Next fall, Choreographer Laban expects to visit the U. S. Perhaps his idea will result in a National Streetdancing Advertising Co. Or perhaps he will find that the U. S. is not yet sufficiently ballet-conscious for the idea to "take."