American Ballet Theatre.

City Center New York, New York October 15-27, 2002 Reviewed by Lynn Garafola

Donald Mahler makes magic when he stages Antony Tudor, and happily, American Ballet Theatre is putting him to work. This season he brought Offenbach in the Underworld to life, and though this is one of the late choreographer's lesser works, it was a delight.

Let me say at the outset that I had doubts about the wisdom of this choice. The music is the same that Leonide Massine used for Gaite Parisienne, that piece of inspired Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo frou-frou, and so closely were they identified that when Offenbach premiered in 1954, Massine threatened to sue. ABT does its own Gaite fancifully designed in 1988 by couturier Christian Lacroix which was bound to make Kay Ambrose's borrowed sets and costumes look frumpy.

What I hadn't counted on was Tudor's eye for character. The tarts here are a bedraggled bunch, the atmosphere touched with tawdry realism. The ballet is full of characters, most a little off-color, and it is a tribute to the choreographer's genius that he can individualize so many of them. A real gem is the character role of Madame la Patronne, performed with humor and heart by Olga Dvorovenko.

Among the mishaps and mayhem, Tudor's choreographic hand is always evident. You sense it in the musicality, the phrasing, and the Cecchetti niceties of footwork and epaulement. There are lovely but all-too-brief duets, so different from the long, long waltz of the lovers in Gaite IN TUDOR'S CYNICAL WORLD, ROMANCE DOESN'T TRIUMPH AND LOVE DOESN'T ENDURE: LIKE DANCE, THEY BURN BRIGHTLY AND VANISH, CONSUMED BY THEIR OWN EPHEMERALITY.

Unlike ABT's spring 2002 season, with its major Ashton revivals, the fall season lacked a strong aesthetic focus. Offenbach was the only Tudor work. There were many pas de deux, and several "novelties," most, alas, of minimal interest. With four high-profile choreographers, the much publicized Within You Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison falls into this category. It was hard to know which was worse-Natalie Weir's trailer-park love triangle ("I Dig Love") or Ann Reinking's groin-grinding workout ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps"). Just as tasteless and also incomprehensible was James Kudelka's world premiere Sin and Tonic, with its gesticulating Cupid in white, male chorus bizarrely costumed in black (by fashion designer Denis Lavoie), and lovers who pass in the dark. Stanton Welch's Clear, a work for one woman and seven glorious men, made up in eccentric gesture what it lacked in movement invention.

Far more successful were works by members of ABT's own family. Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra is Robert Hill's third piece for the company, and it shows off its ten dancers splendidly, above all Angel Corella, who soars like a comet, galvanizing the five other men of the cast in his wake. There are lovely shapes in the adagio, unexpected leans, and a moment when Julie Kent, partnered by Marcelo Comes, sets sail into space like the prow of a magnificent ship. The excerpt from Kirk Peterson's Dancing With Monet (A Gathering at Argenteuil) performed at the opening night gala--two rapturous duets to piano music by Claude Debussy--made one wish for more.

Lar Lubovitch's "... smile with my heart" is a tribute to Richard Rodgers in this centenary year of his birth. Composed by Marvin Laird and scored somewhat pretentiously for three cellos, piano, flute, and oboe, this is a deeply romantic work for three couples, each of whom embodies a different aspect of love. Lubovitch has described the piece as an "inverted pyramid," because it opens with an ensemble dance, then plunges ever deeper into the mysteries of the heart. In the culminating duet, for Sandra Brown and Gomes, Lubovitch capitalizes on the adult passion the two can convey, on the abandon of her backbends and hinges, on the feline eroticism of his body tunneling under the arch of her back in a bridge.

Despite injuries that kept Veronika Part and Monique Meunier out for all or most of the season, and Irina Dvorovenko dancing at half-speed, the season did not lack for individual bright spots. Fancy Free returned to the repertoire, and with Corella (or a happy-go-lucky Joaquin de Luz), Ethan Stiefel, and Jose Manuel Carreno as sailors on the town, it looked more alive than ever. A svelte Paloma Herrera was in top form in the Diana and Acteon Pas de Deux (although Gennadi Saveliev turned the male part into a circus act). She was also terrific in Fancy Free, scolding the boys like a good-humored big sister. Michele Wiles, rapidly advancing to principal (see "From Attitude to Artistry," DANCE MAGAZINE, November 2002, page 50), danced like a goddess in the Grand Pas Classique, while Nina Ananiashvili in the Sylvia: Pas de Deux made a poem of the balances, holding them like a breath, then falling gently into the arms of Gomes, her ever-faithful prince.