BOSTON BALLET.

BOSTON BALLET FEBRUARY 18-28, 1999 MARCH 4-14, 1999 SHUBERT THEATRE, BOSTON

Boston Ballet moved into the Shubert Theatre for its two-part spring season. The premise for switching to the 1,500-seat Shubert, less than half the size of the company's customary home theater, the Wang Theatre, was twofold. The Wang Center management wanted more dates for the big-ticket touring musicals, and the smaller audiences at Boston Ballet's contemporary programs fit more comfortably into the Shubert. Boston Ballet will continue to present The Nutcracker and its other full-length classics at the Wang.

"The Young Masters" featured a revival of Daniel Pelzig's Nine Lives: Songs of Lyle Lovett; the company premiere of Maelstrom by Mark Morris; and a world premiere, Below Down Under, by Boston Ballet principal Laszlo Berdo.

Two more new works were presented in the "Festival of Firsts": Pelzig's Bachianas and Christopher Wheeldon's Corybantic Ecstasies, along with the company premiere of Le Jeune Homme et La Mort (1946), choreographed by Roland Petit. Patrick Armand, in a series of farewell appearances before leaving Boston Ballet to rejoin English National Ballet, gave a properly overripe performance as the young man.

Wheeldon's Corybantic Ecstasies, set to Leonard Bernstein's Serenade after Plato's "Symposium," is the most impressive of the three new works. In a setting designed by Melanie Taylor that looks like an ancient Greek forum with tall pillars spaced across the back wall, Wheeldon has created a piece about the Greek gods at play. The movement he devised, particularly for the men, is dynamic, richly complex, and challenging without being devastating to the dancers.

The main character in the first segment is Eros, backed by four couples who first appear in silhouette, posed between the pillars. The loveliest part is a trio for Echo, Narcissus, and Narcissus's reflection--one dancer dressed in silvery shards (as if dripping water) directly mirrors another dancer--with Echo forgotten as she moves between the two. Hermes and a partner perform a playful, sexy pas de deux, followed by Eros returning with Psyche, portrayed as a sleepwalking woman gliding in tiny bourrees like an image from George Balanchine's La Sonnambula. Wheeldon, who is a member of New York City Ballet, refers to Balanchine's works throughout Corybantic Ecstasies, but as points of departure, not imitations, by a choreographer deeply schooled in the neoclassical style. "Dionysia," the final section, is a hot, primitive-looking ritual that seems to have dropped in from another ballet.

Bachianas, by Pelzig, with music by Heitor Villa-Lobos from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 and No. 1, is a languid, abstract work for eleven dancers built on circle patterns. Paul Thrussell lifts Jennifer Gelfand in a cartwheel over his shoulder; another woman is folded around to the ground like an envelope crushed by a fist and then thrown off-stage into the waiting arms of a stagehand. Later, Gelfand is manipulated through constant turns by three men who do not allow her feet to touch the ground. A soprano at the side of the stage sings the two songs of No. 5, which have not been translated, so that their connection to the choreography is unclear. Pelzig's skills lie more in designing story ballets (which have been important additions to the repertory) than mood pieces such as this one.

For Below Down Under, Berdo uses music by Australian composer Stephen Kent that has its roots in MTV and the clubs, but manages to convey a sense of the outback. The ballet takes place under a huge tent stretched over the stage that continually changes shape during the work. Ten dancers are first discovered hiding under its folds; they then emerge preening like birds. Other phrases are reminders of Jack Cole's modern jazz dance technique without its subtle adaptation of ethnic movement. The work ends with a faintly pornographic duet for a man lying on his back covered by a woman heaving up and down on top of him. The overwhelming presence of the tent and the pop-style choreography give the impression of a Las Vegas extravaganza rather than of the concert stage.