American Ballet Theater, City Center, November 4-16, 1997.

CITY CENTER NOVEMBER 4-16, 1997 REVIEWED BY GUS SOLOMONS JR

Let's hope American Ballet Theatre keeps its promise to make annual fall visits to City Center! The venue gives it a chance to show smaller-scale works to greater advantage than does its usual home, the cavernous Metropolitan Opera House. The company danced with precision and special elan in this theater, which is intimate enough for dancers to feel the audience's proximity and for us to see their faces without binoculars.

The City Center repertory of ABT commissions by old and new masters, plus two newcomers, demonstrates the range for which the company is famous. Though both Agnes de Mille's 1948 Fall River Legend and Jerome Robbins's 1944 Fancy Free are mounted expertly, the former takes too long to tell its story of alleged parental ax murderer Lizzie Borden (a thoroughly convincing Susan Jaffe as The Accused notwithstanding) and the broad humor of the latter shows its age. But Antony Tudor's subtle, ravishing The Leaves Are Fading (1975) is as fresh as spring with a lushly fluent Julie Kent and partner Keith Roberts in leading roles.

Both premieres were short works. In Jean-Christophe Maillot's pas de deux In Volo (the only piece not double cast) Alessandra Ferri and Ethan Stiefel bring dynamic nuance and poignancy to otherwise undistinguished movement. The Adagio from Schubert's C major String Quartet, D. 956, accompanies a love duet wit movement at suggests wi birds. Each partner experiences loss of the other in a grieving solo: he temporarily, then she, permanently, as the piece ends.

Unflattering unitards, designed by the choreographer (who is the director of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo), exaggerate the breadth of Ferri's shoulders and the length of Stiefel's trunk. Still, she, with legs and feet articulate enough to compensate for a rather immobile torso, and he, a brilliant dancer-actor whose dynamic subtlety matches his technical brilliance, enrich Maillot's thin soup.

Set to Enrique Granados's Valses Poeticos for solo piano, Remanso, Spanish wonder Nacho Duato's playfully homoerotic menage a trois for three agile fauns, is a structurally clear, wittily musical, physically exuberant workout. Parrish Maynard, Desmond Richardson, and Vladimir Malakhov (the first cast) fly through athletic etudes with the grace, fluidity, and flexibility of rhythmic gymnasts.

Between ferocious, space-devouring dance episodes, they dart behind, lean on, or climb over a luminous center-stage panel, echoing a device used by William Forsythe in Steptext. A brusque but tender pas de deux for Richardson and Malakhov hints at romance, as does the red rose the three playfully pass among themselves. Duato, the director of Spain's Compania Nacional de Danza, also designed the set, the brief, mesh-topped costumes, and the clever backlighting that casts animated shadows in front of the dancers.

In other repertory, Clark Tippet's Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 (1987) shows off the company's virtuosic aplomb; the dancers twitch and slouch convincingly through Twyla Tharp's The Elements (1996), which mixes dancers in pointe and jazz shoes; and in Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes (1988) Mark Morris tongues his cheek at ballet mannerisms, deliciously animating Virgil Thomson's Etudes, for Piano with rhythmically tricky canons and counterpoints.

The opulent costumes and set for George Balanchine's Theme and Variations (1947) looked a bit crowded on the City Center stage, but it was performed with the requisite bravura by Paloma Herrera, whose dancing lacks finesse despite spectacular line, and her muscular, nobly gracious partner, Jose Manuel Carreno.

In James Kudelka's Cruel World (1994) leather costumes by Carmen Alie and Denis Lavoie evoke a Dickensian era. In a seemingly conventional ensemble ballet structure, angular movement motifs, downcast focus, and inventive lifts suggest a darkly troubled community. At the odd start of the second movement Christine Dunham is manipulated by six men, whose uplifted arms then become pickets of a stockade she traverses.

Two of the company's most versatile stalwarts, Keith Roberts and Gil Boggs, deserve special notice. Boggs's expansive, energetic dancing and generous spirit supersede his diminutive stature, and Roberts--cast in nearly every ballet--is a stylistic chameleon. A further note: Exemplary though its artistry be, more racial diversity would make American Ballet Theatre look even more "American."