American Ballet Theatre.

MAY 11-JULY 4, 1998

The first new production of American Ballet Theatre's spring season two years prior to the millennium was The Snow Maiden, which is based on an ancient Russian legend and set to music by Tchaikovsky, a nineteenth-century composer. Desmond Heeley's designs are marvelous--deep, rich, Russian red and orange costumes contrast with the frosty silver and white of icicles and minarets. Against this backdrop, the Snow Maiden goes wandering in the world of human beings, where she becomes smitten with a man already engaged to be married--and ultimately melts. Unfortunately, she also goes wandering in the world of Ben Stevenson's choreography. Fortune does not smile on her in either case.

The Snow Maiden was coproduced with Houston Ballet, where Stevenson is artistic director. The dancers' interpretations of their roles are hampered by his disappointing, undistinguished, often intellectually lazy choreography and his lack of dramatic eloquence. It's not just that the audience has trouble relating to the dancers; the dancers have trouble relating to each other.

Played wrong, the Snow Maiden is intrusive. She interferes with a couple's happiness on the eve of their wedding, diluting the audience's empathy for her. And she leaves the object of her affection, Misgir, to play a complex role--betrothed to one maid, distracted by another. The characters lack the grand passions of their counterparts in Giselle, and the Snow Maiden herself lacks the profound mystery of Giselle or Odette. Behind the uneasy triangle at the center of the ballet is a corps given choreography of a hasty, shallow, Broadway type, so unsatisfying that applause often didn't last through the choreographed bows.

In the first cast, Nina Ananiashvili looked right--pale and frail, a gamine. She danced her Snow Maiden with a sense of tragic vision from the outset, but, given the material, the performance was thin compared to the incandescent Giselle she also danced this season. Angel Corella, as her Misgir, looked not just torn between his newfound love and his fiancee, Coupava (Kathleen Moore), but dramatically uncentered as well. In a later cast, Julie Kent and Guillaume Graffin tried to bridge the dramatic gap by treating each other as two creatures discovering one another in an icy wonderland, while Ashley Tuttle as Misgir's intended was chilly and imperious.

Yan Chen and Keith Roberts found the best balance among the three casts I saw: she sparkling, he sweet and entranced by this strange creature. Together they created a spontaneous attraction that gave dramatic coherence that the other casts couldn't find. Roberts made his performance and his dancing affecting, his relationship to the Snow Maiden a metaphor for all that is unattainable. He was aided by his Coupava, Paloma Herrera, who danced straightforwardly in a depiction of healthy young love.

In great contrast to the failures of The Snow Maiden came, late in the season, Le Corsaire. You could hear relief in the comments of public and critics alike. The program lists choreography by Konstantin Sergeyev after Marius Petipa, staged by Anna-Marie Holmes with the assistance of Tatiana Legat, Tatiana Terekhova, and Sergei Berejnoi. A production of Boston Ballet, the Petipa gem is a splendid addition to ABT's repertory at this moment in its history--it showcases the spectacular firepower exploding out of the company's principal ranks. The frivolity of the complex, good-humored plot--something about slave girls and pirates, pashas and harems--is just a fabulous excuse to dance.

Ananiashvili's wonderful performance on opening night as Medora underscored the difference between Le Corsaire and the problematic Snow Maiden. She was partnered by soloist Giuseppe Picone, charmingly raffish as her pirate prince; Jose Manuel Carreno brought an exoticism to his slave, Ali, that couldn't be matched, although in subsequent performances both Corella and Picone threatened to bring down the house when they danced that role. Corella did plies in his a la seconde turns while the outrageous, over-the-top Picone performed grands jetes wider than 180 degrees. (The audience loved it; Picone also did the dishiest curtain call--a grand jete from behind the curtain.)

A dancer of remarkable lushness, Ethan Stiefel was a little too clean-cut to be convincing as a pirate (but what's convincing here, anyway?), although his noble bearing suggested Robin Hood, and he was very good in the fight scene when he took on his erstwhile mate, Birbanto (Parrish Maynard, first cheery, then dark). Among the other leads, Vladimir Malakhov in the first cast was delightful--jaunty, seedy, and funny--as the bazaar owner and slave trader Lankendem. In the same role, Roberts was likable but without dramatic resonance; his forthrightness did him a disservice here. Kent's Medora had great generosity, while Susan Jaffe looked as though she was quite enjoying herself. Sandra Brown, Oksana Konobeyeva, and Gillian Murphy danced charmingly as Odalisques, Murphy particularly noticeable in a stunning series of pique turns. Noteworthy, too, was Christina Fagundes, serene and calm as Zulmea. As for the corps, so abandoned by Stevenson, the sheer danciness of the Petipa choreography made them look as if it felt good to dance.

One could wish for a Le Corsaire set that is more than serviceable, more like the inspired magic conjured by Heeley for Snow Maiden. But still, for the season it's one great win, one loss; and overwhelmingly the vote comes down on the side of the pirates and the angel who was Petipa.