But the Limón Dance Company soldiers on, surviving the death of José Limón in 1972 and persisting in the face of changing fashions and economies.
There's a drunken brawl at the dance, the soldiers find it impossible to make contact with the girls they've left behind and two of them crack up.
Almost 60 years ago, he managed to make a comedy about a perky young small-town blonde who goes out one night to dance with soldiers, gets blackout-level drunk, wakes up pregnant and isn't punished horribly.
The Hollywood Canteen waswhere movie stars waited on tables, washed dishes and danced with soldiers.
Also on display are photos and film of the Stage Door Canteen in Times Square, a place where stars like Bette Davis and Lynn Fontanne served coffee and doughnuts or danced with soldiers regardless of their race.
The rebel soldiers dance the dabke, a folk dance popular throughout the Levant.
Then, for the appalling bacchanal in the last act, a disaster in most productions, Israeli soldiers dance orgiastically with their phallic rifles.
The key is in stringing together your time moves in order to dance through enemy soldiers – even as they make decent attempts to flank you, while shouting orders and observations to each other.
Historically, the Hungarian heyduck dance was a soldiers' dance that involved virtuoso whirling of weapons and free-form compositions with battle practice motifs.
Finally, once she told me that during the war (I assumed WW II) several young ladies were bused overseas to dance with the soldiers.
