Alberta Ballet, Joyce Theater, New York, New York, October 14-19, 1997.

What to take? What to leave home? Choosing a repertory for touring must be a bit like packing for a trip. Nearly ninety ballets come on the repertory list kept by the thirty-one-year-old Alberta Ballet from Canada. Among these are works by Ashton, Balanchine, Cranko, Fokine, Lichine, and Tudor. Additionally, the company's past includes samplings of ballet classics restaged by individuals connected with the company. The titles make interesting reading.

The single quadruple bill that made up the Joyce season proved far less interesting. The guiding factor seemed to be the color gray, either literally, in the case of costuming and lighting, or figuratively, in the case of dramatic mood and movement tone.

Serge Bennathan's The Lost I Saw ... is a dance for five men and four women. Gavin Bryars's score (excerpts from The Sinking of the Titanic) is a mixture of murmuring sounds and lowing strings. Its cast members look like fugitives from a private school in regulation uniforms. A zombielike mood exists throughout; woozy comings and goings lead to an incident of some interest for a coupled encounter between two men, which the eye-catching presence of Dennis Lue makes into something beyond physical action. Such drama, however, does not permeate the rest of the ballet.

The Butterfly Dream pas de deux and Facets by artistic director Ali Pourfarrokh proved gray in different ways. In the former (to Marjan Mozetich's Ravelesque score), Barbara Moore and Dominic DeWolfe entwine, Pilobolus-like, to decorative but empty effect. In the latter (set to Mahler), three couples gravely dip, swirl, and commingle to music that seems more murky miasma than inspiration. The influence of modern dance's Jiri Kylian, in costume silhouette and movement quality, washes all over the "facets" in question.

Minor Threat, by Mark Godden (to Mozart), made the most vivid impact on the eye, but much of this was due to eccentric physicalities that bordered on the absurd and/or nearly obscene. What is an audience to make of a stageful of ten dancers variously hooking their hands behind their knees so as to frame their backsides as they "moon" the audience? Similar shticks and tics of movement passed through all Godden's choreography, which seemed to take steady incidental cues from Mozart but very little overriding momentum.