George Balanchine

The Pennsylvania Ballet made its Kennedy Center debut this week with a program that underlined the company's strong Balanchine tradition as well as its penchant for experimentation."

When I told a friend I was seeing the Washington Ballet Thursday at the Kennedy Center, she said, "Aren't they a local dance company?" Actually, the Washington Ballet would be considered an international company if it were performing any place other than Washington.Under the strong artistic direction of Mary Day, this company always manages to serve up strong performances of dances by young, exciting and often European choreographers. It is also a repository for works by the company's late choreographer, Choo San Goh.Opening the evening was George Balanchine's "Concerto Barocco," a dance that is challenging for the dancers as they make their way through the various inventions.

America's grande dame of ballet companies, the San Francisco Ballet, opened its run at the Kennedy Center Tuesday evening with an eclectic program of four works that made excellent use of the company's expert and often astonishing caliber of dancers.First on the program was choreographer George Balanchine's "Stravinsky Violin Concerto," a cheerful romp of a dance that incorporated all of Balanchine's signature technical inventions within the framework of four sections of the composer's score.

The New York Times said in an editorial on Friday:Lights dimmed for a moment last night on Broadway, the theater world's way of honoring Jerome Robbins, one of the century's great choreographers. Robbins, who died in New York City on Wednesday at age 79, left his legendary imprint on every Broadway show he touched, on every ballet he crafted and on audiences who felt his untethered genius behind the athletic rumble in "West Side Story" or in "Watermill," a ballet executed with such exacting slowness that George Balanchine described it as being without time.

Imagine having to recite "To be or not to be" as Laurence Olivier stands there on stage beside you. That's more or less what French violinist Ann-Estelle Medouze did yesterday, playing the Tchaikovsky violin concerto while Pinchas Zukerman -- one of the world's great violinists -- led the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in the last of its Summer MusicFest concerts.However one feels about Zukerman as a conductor, he has been exceptionally generous as a discoverer and mentor of young musicians.

Mary Kathryn Martinet, who danced in classic Broadway musicals, died Sunday of pancreatic cancer at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Conn. She was 76 and lived in Cos Cob, Conn. Born in Baltimore and raised on Woodlawn Road in Roland Park, she was a graduate of Girls' Latin School, where she won awards for playing tennis, badminton and field hockey. She was the daughter of Eugene Martinet, a singer, vocal teacher and founder of the old Baltimore Civic Opera Company, who appeared in the Broadway operetta Blossom Time.

For 17 years The Dance Theatre of Harlem's annual appearance at the Kennedy Center has been a harbinger of spring. Like the season, the company's opening night performance at the Kennedy Center's Opera House was sunny one moment and ominous the next.Under the artistic direction of the legendary Arthur Mitchell, Dance Theatre of Harlem has won well deserved accolades for both the dancers' strength of technique and its diverse programming. But this performance makes one believe that the company has been dancing on its laurels too long.

Ethel L. Payne, 79, a longtime correspondent and columnist for the Chicago Defender who pioneered foreign affairs coverage in the black press, died Tuesday of an apparent heart attack at her Washington home. Ms. Payne, a Chicago native, first went overseas as a reporter in 1955 to cover an international conference in Indonesia. She interviewed Chinese Premier Chou Lai, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie and Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, among others. In the 1970s, she was featured on the CBS program "Spectrum."

Nancy Gregg took time out from her holiday shopping last week to deliver a wreath filled with child-sized paper hands and grinning foam-board faces to the Carroll County Arts Council. Preschoolers in Gregg's care at the Child Development Center at Carroll Community College fashioned the wreath and dubbed it "Festive Faces." It is one of more than 200 entries in a five-day silent auction during the council's eighth annual Festival of Wreaths, opening Wednesday at the Carroll Arts Center in downtown Westminster.

Estelle Dennis, who founded the first Dance Theatre in Baltimore in 1934 that was dedicated to the training and education of aspiring dancers, died Wednesday of a heart attack at St. Joseph's Medical Center.She was 87 and lived near Cockeysville.A dancer and choreographer who taught ballet and contemporary dance forms, Miss Dennis remained active at her 13 W. Mount Vernon Place Studio until 10 years ago. The Estelle Dennis Dance Theatre is now under the direction of a former student and partner, Louise Muse.