It’s too bad Neil Armstrong didn’t break into dance and literally take a giant (graceful) leap for mankind rather than one small step for man. Luckily for us however, there is the Moon Ballet. I dug up this curious little gem from the LIFE archives, photographed in 1950 by Allan Grant on what any sci-fi film buff will instantly recognise as the set of George Pal’s Destination Moon, filmed in technicolor that very year. And look, our flexible moon explorer is even wearing the infamous magnetic moon boots from the original character’s costumes.
What fans of the film might not recognise however, is the ballet slippers… and the pirouettes. As to why there are ballerinas prancing around the set of Destination Moon, what is was for, and why LIFE sent Allan Grant down to document it– we might never know. The LIFE photo archives often tend to be painfully lacking in background information, but something tells me there isn’t too much sense to be made out of a ballet set in space. I’m pretty confident that this is the strangest thing you’ll see today and that’s good enough for me.
All images (c) Allan Grant for LIFE
