In A Time to Dance A Time to Run Maria, a gifted German prima ballerina, is breathtaking and graceful on the stage-scrambling and scurrying on the streets-streets that first echo the clicks of Nazi boots, and then melt when allied bombs collapse the sky and incinerate the cities. Forging a career in dance is difficult enough for her, but with gutted theaters, disrupted performances, destroyed costumes, and a ration of pound of meat per month, it is unimaginable how she could survive. Through all this, she is loved and admired for her sense of humor in addition to her elegance and talent, which propel her to renown. Fleeing to the Black Forest to avoid Hitler's draft into his Elite Corps of Entertainers, it is Maria's ballet training that repeatedly saves her life as she thwarts the advances of brutal occupying French soldiers and Arab mercenaries. She realizes that there is no refuge for any innocent German civilian-anywhere. As the Allies occupy her country, Maria is startled by the admiration of an American officer who sees her dance, and wants to meet her. Their courtship flowers into love in spite of the fact that the war deems them enemies. He helps her establish a troupe of entertainers who bring some relief to the Germans of post war devastation, and ultimately brings her and their child to America.