American Ballet Theatre.

CITY CENTER NEW YORK, NEW YORK OCTOBER 22-NOVEMBER 9, 2003

ABT is splitting into two. Well, not actually, but programming between its New York fall season at City Center (this year for the first time extended to a welcome three weeks) and its eight-week spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House is virtually polarized. While the Met's season is devoted in general to full-evening works, mostly time-honored, and occasionally time-worn, classics, City Center's is given over to a more varied, and potentially more adventurous, repertoire. This gives ABT a chance to show some of its own indigenous ballets that have been created or nurtured over the past half century or so, and an opportunity to introduce brand-new works together with interesting company premieres. It thus diversifies the repertoire. These works can be, and obviously are, planned to give some junior members of the company a chance to shine.

Since Kevin McKenzie's shrewd curatorship of ABT as the fifth artistic director in its history, few could dispute that the accent has been more on the dancer than the dance--and currently the company boasts the best troupe of male dancers in the world. So, not unexpectedly, the 2003 fall season was a showcase for some magnificent dancing. The other, more creative, side of the coin proved less engaging.

The only world premiere was Robert Hill's Dorian, based on Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, with a dull, patchwork score arranged by Jon Magnussen (based on music by Ernest Chausson, Robert Schumann, and Frederic Chopin), and stylish, largely monochromatic, scenery and costumes by Zack Brown that were cleverly suggestive of Aubrey Beardsley and The Yellow Book. Unfortunately, this adaptation of Dorian proved dramatically fuzzy and choreographically mundane. Unadorned classical steps given little character focus were used to tell this story of a beautiful young man who seems unaffected by excess, depravity, or age, although a portrait of his youthful self at home shows all that awesome wear and tear. It was nearly saved, or at least made nearly bearable, by the virtuosic dancing, with a first cast including David Hallberg, suavely brilliant in his first created role, as Dorian; Marcelo Gomes as The Picture; and Julie Kent as the betrayed actress Sibyl Vane. Its second cast was virtually its match, with fascinatingly intense company newcomer Jesus Pastor, Carlos Lopez, and Xiomara Reyes.

The company premieres fared better. William Forsythe's 1998 workwithinwork, to Luciano Berio music, suffers, as does much of Forsythe's recent choreography, from a linear rather than spatial structure. There is confusion between squiggling (especially squiggling with hand movements) and real invention. Yet it had a certain dynamic interest, and was sensationally well danced, particularly by first Lopez and later by Ethan Stiefel as, as it were, the squiggler-in-chief.

Less pretentious but a good deal more interesting were the two vignettes by Jig Kylian, the stylish and lightly humorous Petite Mort (1991), and the more boisterous Sechs Tanze (1986), both linked by Mozart music and a joint, vaguely surrealistic sensibility. They were fun, and both were beautifully danced by their various and varying ensemble casts.

Also new was a cheerful burlesque duet (think Tudor's 1938 Gala Performance and then downscale the quality), Le Grand Pas de Deux (1999), choreographed by Stuttgart's Christian Spuck and set to Gioacchino Rossini's Overture to the Thieving Magpie. This was first danced at the opening night gala by a charmingly flustered Vladimir Malakhov and an equally charmingly nutsy Reyes, and later, to much the same comic effect, by a fantastically virtuosic Herman Cornejo, again with Reyes, and Maxim Beloserkovsky and Irina Dvorovenko.

ABT has a long past with a huge ballet warehouse--and this season a number of works were pulled out for examination. These ranged from Balanchine's magisterial Theme and Variations--in which Hallberg, in a debut, and Michele Wiles proved especially notable--and Agnes de Mille's totally trivial revue skit Three Virgins and a Devil (does no one remember her more impressive Tally Ho from about the same period?), in which Carlos Molina and Craig Salstein both did neat comic turns as the Devil, a role once amusingly danced by Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Martha Graham's sinuously enchanting Diversion of Angels was lit by luminous performances from its various casts, but two works longer out of the repertoire--Sir Frederick Ashton's exquisite masterpiece Symphonic Variations, staged by Wendy Ellis Somes, and Antony Tudor's Pillar of Fire, staged by Donald Mahler--had the special interest of rarity. Both stagings could have been better. Symphonic Variations, cursed by sluggish music (ABT really does need to pull up the socks of its musical collaborators), was welcome but not quite in pristine condition, although the second cast of Stella Abrera (who had a great season) and Gomes, with Yena Kang, Zhong-Jing Fang (an apprentice!), Hallberg, and Jared Matthews, produced a markedly purer Ashtonian style than the first cast of Ashley Tuttle and Beloserkovsky, with Marian Butler, Maria Ricceto, Lopez, and Salstein.

For some reason (certainly not a good one), Pillar of Fire has lost its original classic designs by Jo Mielziner in favor of feeble replacements by Robert Perdziola--a serious mistake. The revival--Mahler was assisted, but perhaps not enough, by Susan Jones and Kirk Peterson-lacked the casual minutiae of authenticity. Nora Kaye's old role of Hagar was moderately well performed by a new trio, a solid Gillian Murphy, a febrile Julie Kent, and a promising Amanda McKerrow. Interestingly, and perhaps revealingly, the best performance in the ballet came from Reyes as the Youngest Sister. Here was Tudor plain and simple.

The other revivals included revitalized performances of Jerome Robbins's Fancy Free, Murphy and a marvelously acrobatic Gennadi Saveliev dancing the house down in The Flames of Paris, pas de dexu and some really exciting performances of Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, in which both Herman Cornejo and Carlos Acosta, floating through the air, made positively electric local debuts.

The 29-year-old Acosta--now one of the great classic male dancers of our time--was seen far too little. Just in that Balanchine and, partnering a pertly musical Wiles, in the new staging by Anna-Marie Holmes of the Grand Pas Classique from Raymonda. His performances were exemplary. He combines strength, athleticism, and masculinity with a wonderful softness. He sweeps through the air like a whirlwind but lands like a cat--a veritable jaguar among dancers. The Raymonda excerpt--intended, successfully I felt, to whet our appetite for the full-evening Raymonda promised for the spring--was led earlier with sumptuous grandeur by Paloma Herrera and Jose Manuel Carreno.

The dancers looked in great shape--including a few I haven't yet mentioned, such as Angel Corella, Sandra Brown, Carmen Corella, Erica Cornejo, Sascha Radetsky, Julio Bragado-Young (a fine dancer who, incidentally, needs to improve his double rums if he intends to continue in the Raymonda pas de quatre), Dartanion Reed, Isaac Stappas, and the newest men, such as Kenneth Easter, Jeffrey Golladay, Danny Tidwell (extraordinary in Dorian), and Eric Underwood.

Finally, what happened to the company's two invisible women--Monique Meunier and Veronika Part, who joined the company from New York City Ballet and the Kirov Ballet, respectively, about a year ago with fanfare? They could be sighted once or twice during the season, but you had be careful not to blink.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

www.abt.org; 212.477.3030

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

Washington, D.C., Feb 3-8, 2004; Cleveland, OH, March 11-14; Chicago, IL, March 24-28