ABT Studio Company.

JANUARY 16-18, 1998 REVIEWED BY AMANDA SMITH

This presentation by American Ballet Theatre's junior touring ensemble delighted the many children in the audience--at whom the program, a part of the New Victory's Step I series, was aimed--and pleased the adults as well. Part concert, part lecture-demonstration (with a nod to ballet history), and part audience participation, the performances showcased the dancers, aged sixteen to twenty.

Director John Meehan, a former ABT principal, was the genial overseer of the lec-dem proceedings. His own choreography was represented by Bach 11, a neoclassic piece reminiscent of Balanchine's Concerto Barocco. When the audience was asked to participate, current ABT principal John Selya was lively and funny as he cajoled two very young audience members onstage and taught them roles for his Carnival of the Animals. Although Selya's piece pleased the little ones, it was too literal for older viewers. In the splashy pas de deux category, Michele Wiles (17), a sparkling blonde, and Casey Herd (20) dispatched a decent Don Quixote.

Choreographically, the piece to look at was La Folio ("Folly") by Texas-born Montreal resident Mark Godden. Godden's performance career has been essentially balletic, but this wacky vision suggests he has had brushes with modern dance, German dance drama, and the surreal world of Alwin Nikolais.

Initially, only hands and arms stick out from the wings. When we finally see all the dancers, their eyes are blackened--ghoulish but fun. They lie on the stage and stick their legs in the air like dead insects. Men pull their T-shirts up to their hairlines, then leave them turned inside out so that they resemble a sheik's golden headdress. Decor can also become costume: what look like three giant striped lampshades hanging from the flies are yanked down to become Spanishy skirts for the women, then Egyptian costumes for the men, still crowned with their T-shirts. Despite its diverse imagery, La Folio holds together because Godden's vision is oddball and fun, like imaginative Halloween cavorting.

The program closed charmingly with the dancers sitting on the apron of the stage to take questions from viewers only slightly younger than they. We learned that Wiles's inspiration to dance was seeing Darcey Bussell do Swan Lake, and that Herd was a former football player. Most interesting question: Did other kids make fun of you for dancing ballet? The women: No. The men: Yeah, but we decided to do our own thing anyway.