ABT SPRINGS FORWARD.

ABT SPRINGS FORWARD AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE NEW YORK, NEW YORK APRIL 30-JUNE 23, 2001

Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie is shaping American Ballet Theatre into a thoroughly American company in spirit, if not repertoire. His choices of dancers and commissioned choreographers reflect youthful athleticism, dynamic restlessness, independence, and innovation. The dancers' technical mastery and stylistic versatility amaze. The company also keeps nineteenth-century classics evergreen with elaborate visual productions, but attacks their performance with brash confidence that's American to the core. Kudos too, for including several family-oriented ballets and staging Saturday children's matinees targeting the ticket buyers of tomorrow.

Of three premieres in this year's eight-week spring season, Mark Morris's Gong was a keeper, set to Colin McPhee's eastern-sounding magnum opus, Tabuh-Tabuhan (1936) for two pianos, orchestra, and percussion. Frontal movement--lateral skittering with hands overhead in prayer position--had a whimsical exoticism, and Morris's same-gender partnering was iconoclastic in a pointe ballet. Isaac Mizrahi's hotly colorful mushroom tutus--chartreuse, lime, ruby--glowed in Michael Chybowski's sunny lights.

The other premieres fared less well. Danced to songs of the Depression, Paul Taylor's Black Tuesday received such a gutsy performance by a terrific cast that its feeling of thinness momentarily faded. Willowy Michele Wiles cavorted, pregnant; cigar-smoking lothario Giuseppe Picone harassed his harem; then Gillian Murphy--after crawling on all fours with Picone on her back--lamented ("The Boulevard of Broken Dreams"). Finally, the motley cast backed down-and-out Joaquin De Luz to the anthem of the era, "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" It was pretty uninspired Taylor, a small dance for such a big stage.

David Parsons's highly anticipated The Pied Piper was a visual feast. ABT veteran Victor Barbee, as an ancient mentor, began silhouetted against a digitally animated blazing sunrise by Michaela Zabranska. He swirled his capacious cloak, and the rambunctious Piper (Angel Corella), his child alter ego (Chase Finlay), and onstage flautist Carol Wincenc appeared magically. After this handsome opening, Parsons proceeded merely to illustrate the tale of greedy townies refusing to pay the piper for ridding their burg of vermin, so that the piper charms their kiddies away and turns them into stars.

For whatever reasons, Parsons, usually an astute crafter of stage space, abandoned his signature morphing group patterns--perfect, it would seem, for animating townsfolk. Instead, they hopped up and down in Ann Hould-Ward's whimsical costumes, waving arms to denote glee and anger and despair. Eerie, red-eyed puppet rats (by Michael Curry) swarmed, as did dancers in rat costumes. But choreographically, nothing happened. Plus, the daunting task of adapting John Corigliano's Pied Piper Fantasy: Concerto for Flute and Orchestra to his narrative led inevitably to anticlimactic repetitiousness. Children deserve, and grownups demand, more substance.

Also child-friendly: Go-for-broke dancer Ashley Tuttle (who moonlights in Twyla Tharp's new company) and Corella (brio personified) managed to smooth over the choreographic potholes in their pas de deux in Ben Stevenson's Cinderella. One swooping double fish dive was breath stopping, though. Brian Reeder and Vladislav Kalinin staged pratfalls as the awkward step-sisters. David Walker's costumes and tons of scenery added visual richness, and the humor charmed the youngsters in attendance.

The tale of Don Quixote could easily be told in twenty minutes. But Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky stretched it to two hours with a toreador (Carlos Molina) and his girlfriend (Carmen Corella), a gypsy couple (Herman and Erica Cornejo), a dryad queen (Ekaterina Shelkanova) with her dream maidens, et al. McKenzie's and Susan Jones's restaging was delightfully entertaining. Buffoonery by Kitri's would-be suitor Gamache (Guillaume Graffin), a rich fop, Don Q (Victor Barbee), and his sidekick Sancho Panza (Flavio Salazar), and comic timing by all the principals were laugh-out-loud funny. For a change, the pantomime was clear as English.

But what stole the show was the dancing of rising star Gillian Murphy as Kitri and Corella as Basilio, her haircutter beau. Both danced like champions, exuding a confidence in their virtuosity that bowled you over. Corella routinely whipped off six pirouettes, pausing at the end to tease viewers. Murphy, in the grand pas de deux, inserted double pirouettes between her fouettes. Santo Loquasto's sets and costumes were festive, and conductor Ermanno Florio led his musicians fearlessly through the complicated tempo changes.

It's hard to imagine a more authoritative Myrtha, Queen of the Wills in Giselle, than Murphy. Indelibly present and technically precise, she was not--as Guillaume Graffin's sullen Hilarion discovered--to be trifled with. Heading this brilliant cast, Nina Ananiashvili and Julio Bocca, her Albrecht, combined physical grace and emotional power. In another cast, Amanda McKerrow was too emotionally uncomplicated in the first act, but her second act was dramatically and technically flawless. At curtain call, her husband John Gardner--whose Hilarion was subtly dimensional, not the heavy he's often portrayed--was honored by the company members with white roses; he has since returned to his hometown and joined Washington Ballet.

In John Cranko's Onegin, Irina Dvorovenko as the heroine Tatiana and Giuseppe Picone (who has also left ABT) in the title role both overacted: His melancholy slipped into petulance; her subtlest gestures shouted. But technically they were extraordinary: His jetes hung midair; her extensions were extreme; both devoured space. Their climactic duet tore passion to shreds in true Russian style. Sholem Dolgoy's lighting flattered Jurgen Rose's sumptuous sets and costumes. Pony-tailed James Tuggle vigorously conducted Tchaikovsky's soaring music, arranged by Kurt-Heinz Stolze.

McKenzie's reworking of Swan Lake was a knockout, theatrically. A prologue established von Rothbart as monster [brian Reeder) that can transform into a human (Vladimir Malakhov). The corps had good, hard ballet dancing to do at Prince Siegfried's (Corella) Act I birthday party. McKenzie gets on with the action and resolves it with a dramatic suicide leap by Odette and Siegfried, which breaks von Rothbart's control.

Ever-radiant Julie Kent epitomized how technique should serve character, rather than becoming virtuosic display. Her portrayal of Odette/Odile was beautifully lucid: Odette was sensuous maiden who transforms into swan with a subtle shift of her back; Odile was sensual seductress. Kent, the soul of musicality and brilliant phrasing, brought down the house by saving for the Black Swan pas de deux finish (Act III) her most extravagant backbend.

Also in repertory were an all-Tchaikovsky program, which gave everyone a chance to shine, and The Merry Widow, another splashy crowd-pleaser.