<DIV>It’s 1948 and during a spring weekend in Westport, Connecticut, a close-knit group of Russian émigrés, including choreographer George Balanchine, composer Igor Stravinsky, conductor Serge Koussevitsky, painter/set designer Sergey Sudeikin, and composer Nikolai Nabokov, gather to eat, drink and talk.<br> In <i>Nikolai and the Others</i> Richard Nelson imagines the relationships between Balanchine and Stravinsky, their friends, lovers, wives and ex-wives, supporters, and dancers (including Maria Tallchief and Nicholas Magallanes), at the time of their historic collaboration on the ballet <i>Orpheus</i>. Later that year, <i>Orpheus</i> would be the spectacular inaugural production of the newly formed New York City Ballet. The play also explores the controversial ways American art and artistic institutions were funded at the outset of the Cold War?including the subtle hand of the State Department in the post-war cultural scene.</div>