AUSTRALIAN BALLET.

AUSTRALIAN BALLET CITY CENTER OCTOBER 12-17, 1999 REVIEWED BY DORIS HERING

What a treat to have an overseas ballet company regale us with adventuresome works by homegrown choreographers. They made Australian Ballet's New York City visit memorable.

Although the company's nearly forty-year history has been forged mostly by British directors, its dancers, like its choreographers, have unique identities of their own. Their acting is straightforward yet passionate; their movement flows easily from strong but flexible torsos.

In Rites, created by Stephen Page to the Stravinsky Sacre du Printemps, it was fascinating to see the harmonious blending of styles between these ballet-trained dancers and the members of the indigenous Bangarra Dance Theatre. There was nothing self-consciously exotic or strained as they joined in their primitive ceremony. In one section, a priestess in a tall headdress presided over three other women. Their calm configurations recalled Martha Graham's Dark Meadow, yet the scene remained close to the earth and close to the incantations of Djakapurra Munyarryun, a shaman who wove among the celebrants with the padded gait of a leopard.

Choreographers Stephen Baynes and Natalie Weir favored a contemporary romantic vein. For At the Edge of Night Baynes used seven Rachmaninoff piano preludes to generate an atmosphere of dreams and remembrance. The skillfully divided (by designer Michael Pearce) stage space surrounding soloist Lisa Bolte often seemed to turn into chambers of heart and mind. Images swept through as though caught in a silent wind.

In Dark Lullaby, Weir also made sensitive use of the music (movements from Gustav Mahler's First and Fifth Symphonies). The stage initially looked rather eccentric. Hugh Colman's set consisted of a tilted, ladderlike structure against which Geon van der Wyst was drawn into wildly angular shapes. Joshua Consandine alternately reached upward and collapsed as he clung to a huge, circular grill.

Resident choreographer Stanton Welch is a storyteller in the English tradition of Kenneth MacMillan, Ben Stevenson, and, to a lesser degree, John Cranko. Essentially, they use mime to narrate and dance to embellish.

Welch's Madame Butterfly drew upon the Puccini score arranged by John Lanchbery. Although I have limitless faith in the expressive power of dance, I sorely missed the voices, especially the blended harmonies of Cio-Cio-San and Suzuki. As it was, the two roles, responsively danced by Vicki Attard and Miranda Coney, seemed almost secondary to Damien Welch's Pinkerton, with his hard-muscled boyishness. Steven Woodgate as Goro, the marriage broker, buzzed through the action like a thirsty mosquito. He was the perfect foil for Steven Heathcote's humane Sharpless.

Georges Bizet's L'Arlesienne suite seemed a strange choice for Stanton Welch's Divergence. The music bounced along almost unaware of the choreography; or perhaps the reverse was true. And despite the succession of embellishments that designer Vanessa Layonhjelm added to her initial costumes, the impression was of a dramatic choreographer out of his depth in abstract dancemaking.

Some of the contemporary ballet companies recently seen in New York--Eifman Ballet and Oregon Ballet Theatre come to mind--have reflected the personality and taste of a dominant artistic director. Australian Ballet seems, instead, to bring us closer to the Australians as individuals. Since he has been with the company less than three years, I don't know if artistic director Ross Stretton is responsible for this refreshing quality. Chances are that he is, for he, too, is Australian, with a dollop of American Ballet Theatre--the dollop that also cherishes individuality.