Angel in Tights

"When I first decided to form a ballet company, Mother said: 'Dear, why don't you just see a psychiatrist?' I told her it would be cheaper to form a ballet company."

So Rebekah Harkness went ahead, put up $2,000,000, and founded a real live dance company of her very own. Last month the new Harkness Ballet, headed by Choreographer George Skibine, launched a three-month "shakedown cruise" in Europe. What impressed the critics was the youthful verve and vitality of the 30-member company--which, unfortunately, the repertory of 14 ballets only partially exploited.

Most successful offerings: Alvin Ailey's Feast of Ashes, a tragic, turbulent story of matriarchal domination; Stuart Hodes's The Abyss, a tale of rape and lost innocence eloquently danced by Lone Isaksen, a young Danish girl who sticks out as the troupe's most promising soloist; Alley's Ariadne, highlighted by a fearsome battle between Theseus and a horde of minotaurs. Tradition was provided by Prima Ballerina Marjorie Tallchief (Skibine's wife and sister of the New York City Ballet's Maria Tallchief) and the famed Danish dancer Erik Bruhn as guest artist.

Superior Way. Rebekah Harkness' infatuation for the dance began when she took a few ballet lessons as a budding debutante in St. Louis. Her "career" ended at 19, when she appeared in Aida and was reprimanded by her stockbroker father for not wearing enough clothes. In 1947 she married FinancierPhilanthropist William Hale Harkness, inherited his fortune in Standard Oil holdings when he died seven years later. Searching for a vocation "superior to the way of life I was born to--society," she took a stab at interior decorating, sculpting and piano playing, eventually turned to writing semiclassical music.

Then she found the dance. In 1962 Rebekah invited Choreographer Robert Jeffrey and his 22-member company to her 49-room ocean-front mansion in Watch Hill, R.I., to initiate a summer dance workshop. Headquarters was a converted firehouse near by. Last year, the two had a falling out and Rebekah called in Skibine to create the Harkness Ballet.

At 49, Rebekah Harkness is a trim strawberry blonde and mother of three. She rises each morning at dawn, pulls on a pair of tights and spends two hours taking private ballet lessons. "I must do it myself," she explains, "or else I'd just sit back and write out checks."

Shuttling between her Watch Hill retreat, her winter home in Nassau, her chalet in Switzerland, her 15-room Manhattan penthouse, and her studio in Carnegie Hall, she pursues her vision with an all-encompassing passion. Divorced in January from her second husband, Dr. Benjamin Kean, she bought a four-story brick mansion off Manhattan's Fifth Avenue and is renovating it into the Harkness House for Ballet Arts. It will include a workshop and dance school, out of which she plans to form a junior Harkness troupe to tour the small towns.

Search for Lama. As U.S. ballet's most active angel, Rebekah Harkness hopes to offset the "dangers of centralization" presented by the New York City Ballet's George Balanchine. "If anything should happen to this remarkable man," she says, "we would all be running around like they do in Tibet looking for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. I would like to find a few prospects for this post before we find ourselves in that predicament."

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