ABT flush for return to NYC.

NEW YORK CITY--As American Ballet Theatre opens its 1996 season in its hometown April 29 at the Metropolitan Opera House, artistic director Kevin McKenzie has reason to crow not just about his dancers, which he likes to do, but about the company's financial reports as well.

ABT posted a $780,000 surplus in the first five months of the fiscal year which started last September, after raising $4 million in donations and $1 million in touring revenue. After covering expenses, the company was able to reduce the ongoing deficit from $5 million to just over $4 million, according to executive director Michael Kaiser. Kaiser credits the hefty level of contributions to ABT's efforts to increase its year-round presence in New York. [See March Presstime News, page 46] "We're trying to put in place programs that get our donors excited year-round, not just when we're at the Met, and this is starting to show in our fund-raising programs," he says.

The company is flush artistically as well, according to McKenzie. "It's a lovely moment in time right now," he says. "We have some very exciting new male dancers, and some very exciting emerging female dancers that I believe are stars of the future." This is not to slight ABT's perennial stars, all of whom McKenzie extols, praising the soloists and corps as well.

The newer male dancers include principal Jose Manuel Carreno, going full-time with this season("A wonderfully sensitive partner," McKenzie says); Vladimir Malakhov, a principal also now full-time ("A very special quality, based in a classic tradition"); and soloist Angel Corella ("This amazing young natural talent. Sometimes you take it for granted because the talent is large that he has the information already--sometimes he doesn't"). McKenzie praises the female dancers, including principals Paloma Herrera ("another amazing natural shining star"), Julie Kent ("This form of elegance and complete attention to detail"), Susan Jaffe ("Coming into her own"), and Amanda McKerrow ("Miss Versatility").

The season opens with McKenzie and Susan Jones's staging of Don Quixote (Herrera and Corella will dance the leads opening night). It also offers Balanchine's Apollo, Ballet Imperial, and Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux. There's an all-Twyla Tharp evening of How Near Heaven, Americans We, and a premiere, as well as the U.S. and ABT premiere of Jiri Kylian's Stepping Stones.

Kylian, says McKenzie, "has taken what everyone says--"What's happened to dance?' `Is classical ballet dead?' or `It's all modern now'--and synthesized those elements, not just the techniques of classical and modern, but as theater....He probably has defined what the art form can be and will be for the next century. The point of theater is to challenge our assumptions, otherwise it's simply entertainment. [Kylian] has pushed the envelope of our assumptions."

ABT has other projects geared to help push the creative envelope. Starting with its 1997-98 season. McKenzie says, it will launch a workshop program involving the ABT studio company. New work will be presented to an audience, its feedback will be solicited, and the choreographer will be able to tinker with the dance before it receives a full production. In addition to enticing choreographers, McKenzie hopes the program will give the audience the chance "to be involved in the process of creation."