On Thursday, I went to see the ABT’s 75th Anniversary show at Lincoln Theater. There were three ballets in a row, the first two not having much of a story. The third on the other hand was perhaps the best stage show I’ve ever seen. It’s called The Green Table, and it was choreographed in 1932 as an anti-war statement. It opens with suit-wearing dancers in fiendish masks resembling old men seeming to be negotiating. These “Gentlemen In Black” as the Playbill calls them, are meant to represent diplomats. The diplomacy inevitably fails, resulting in a war. There is a dancer in skull paint, meant to represent Death, as well as several young men wearing helmets meant to represent soldiers, three women in dresses meant to represent their wives, and a character in a tight white shirt and a bowler hat called the “Profiteer,” who I can only assume is an arms manufacturer or someone else who profits off of war. In the course of the story, every character ends up dying and following Death to their eternal rest, only for the first scene, the one with the Gentlemen In Black, to repeat movement for movement. Thus, the ballet ends, with the cycle of politics and warfare continuing onwards, seemingly for eternity. As you can probably tell, this is a highly cynical ballet, in sharp contrast to the whimsy of classics like the Nutcracker. The Green Table deserves far more attention than it gets in our culture.