AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE: The Heart of the Matter.

In its fall season at City Center, American Ballet Theatre revealed the heart of contemporary classicism--vital repertory performed by dancers at the height of their powers.

America's three leading ballet companies, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and San Francisco Ballet, each maintain a different balance between choreographers and interpreters. In NYCB the choreographers dominate, and the dancers are keenly responsive instruments. In SFB there is a thoughtful balance between the two forces. ABT stresses the dancers as individuals.

In her new ballet, Known by Heart, premiered during ABT's tall season at City Center, October 27-November 8, Twyla Tharp appeared to select her dancers not only for their individuality but also for the traits that they emphasized in each other. The dashing Angel Corella was paired with patrician Julie Kent; boyish Ethan Stiefel partnered assertive Susan Jaffe; Keith Roberts shared a cyclonic duet with Griff Braun, and then, almost magically, the two were cloned by Sean Stewart and Marcelo Gomes.

A playful strain of counterpoint often runs through the structure of Tharp's ballets. In Known by Heart she superimposed one layer of counterpoint upon another. The effect was exhilarating in its relentlessness, and the musical choices (Donald Knaack's Junk Music, a Mozart Danse Allemande, and Steve Reich's Six Pianos) were equally imaginative.

As Stiefel or Corella curled on the floor at the conclusion of Nacho Duato's premiere, Without Words, the choreographer seemed to be reaffirming the verity that no matter how intense our loves, we end in solitude. To Schubert songs transcribed for cello and piano, four couples emerged from the darkness beneath a movie screen. Still black-and-white photographs focusing on details of their dances were projected. Because of their size, the images sometimes dominated the action.

Duato's dances are direct and physical. He lets the emotions flow spontaneously, and the choreography takes shape from this flow. In Without Words this sometimes happened with grace and tenderness, sometimes, as in the duet for Kent and Vladimir Malakhov, with unbelievable poignancy.

As a choreographer, ABT corps member John Selya manifests more enthusiasm than taste. In his new ballet, Disposition, there were too many variations on red and black in his costumes; too many cheery Shostakovitch dances (Suite for Jazz Orchestra) in the accompaniment; too many physical tricks (Paloma Herrera kicking the back of her head; Giuseppe Picone doing press lifts; a barrage of grandes pirouettes). Editing would have been welcome.

Jiri Kylian's Sinfonietta (to Janacek's music) is a vigorously romantic utterance spun out before an expanse of land and sky. In its company premiere, John Neumeier's Spring and Fall invited comparison. Its sweeping patterns took place before a wash of changing sky, and, like Sinfonietta, it had a Czech composer, Dvorak. Despite its use of three of ABT's finest male dancers, Corella, John Gardner, and Maxim Belotserkovsky, it lacked the valor of Sinfonietta. The men engaged in boyish pursuit of Kent, while the corps reflected her shifts in mood.

In addition to their brilliance, the ABT men have an ingratiating modesty. It brought distinction even to the revival of Anton Dolin's mundane display piece, Variations for Four. Led by the Apollonian Malakhov, the beautifully matched quartet included Belotserkovsky, Jose Manuel Carreno, and Stiefel. A subsequent performance, with Picone and Corella replacing Belotserkovsky and Carreno, looked somewhat underrehearsed.

Duato's Remanso glowed with a similar modesty. The word remanso means "eddy," and the participants, Malakhov, Roberts, and Belotserkovsky, hurled themselves against a white panel or melted behind it as though it were an implacable seawall. The charm of the ballet lay not only in the clean-cut accuracy of the performing but also in Duato's assertive yet sensitive use of the men.

The nearest to a display piece for the women was the revival of Antony Tudor's Gala Performance, with its outrageous Victorian ballerinas. I most enjoyed Jaffe's stony pomposity as the Italian, Anna Liceica's effusive Russian, and Ashley Tuttle's giddy French danseuse. But Tudor's wit requires more buffing.

Four pas de deux were sprinkled among the season's more extended fare. Jaffe and Carreno deserved a more substantial challenge than Victor Gsovsky's Grand Pas Classique. In the Black Swan Pas de Deux, Herrera substituted mannerism for style and failed to benefit from Picone's intelligent partnering.

Kent and Guillaume Graffin presented a rather remote Balcony Pas de Deux from Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, but it's a difficult piece to perform out of context. So is the pas de deux from Tudor's The Leaves Are Fading. And yet Gardner's windswept partnering created a richly nuanced setting for Amanda McKerrow's sensitivity.

Then there was opera diva Cecilia Bartoli. Short, plump, and wearing a precariously snug gown, she tossed off a garland of French and Catalan songs with such seductive charm that she enticed virtuoso dancer Corella away from his partner, Tuttle. Once Bartoli had him literally at her feet, she blithely sauntered off without him. Artistic director Kevin McKenzie was responsible for this playful Piece d'Occasion made especially for the opening night of a season filled with impressive dancing and often stimulating choreography--with Tharp's Known by Heart leading the way.

Doris Hering is a senior editor of Dance Magazine.