Bavarian National Ballet.

MARCH 17-25, 1996 REVIEWED BY INGE ZURNER

Bavarian National Ballet's 1996 Ballet Week, an annual festival, gave proof of the continually rising performance standards of these dancers as well as of the success of director Konstanze Vernon's efforts to build a repertoire that ranges from classics to creations bordering on Tanztheater, or dance-theater.

The week opened with the premiere of Shannon Rose, a dance drama by Youri Vamos. Born in Budapest, Vamos danced in Munich before working as a choreographer at several opera houses in Germany. (Starting in September, he will be based at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.) Shannon Rose is his fifteenth evening-length ballet. Set in an Irish fishing village during World War I, the ballet is a tale of three outsiders who are drawn to one another: Rose, eager for a life beyond her crude community; the solitary widowed teacher who becomes her elderly husband; and a young British officer, disturbed after a crippling injury and betrayed by his bride. The claustrophobic village society, smoldering under foreign occupation, tilts the course of these three lives toward tragedy.

Vamos, in collaboration with his long-time designer Michael Scott, has created a powerful drama to a selection of rather obscure compositions by Jean Sibelius. He has found expressive movement sequences, based on ballet and modern dance, to characterize the emotional upheavals of the protagonists and the malicious vigilance of the villagers. But he has left the supporting roles as mere sketches, and the complex structure (including flashbacks) makes the plot difficult to follow at first viewing. The fascinating performances of Judith Turos (Rose), Kirill Melnikov (the Teacher), and Luca Masala (the Officer), as well as the marvelous playing of violinist Luis Michal and the State Orchestra under Andre Presser, earned enthusiastic applause.

The Ballet Week's gala showcased two shorter premieres that reflected Vernon's desire to engage the best contemporary choreographers of international renown to work with her company. Hans van Manen set Sarkasmen ("Sarcasm"), to Sergei Prokofiev's Five Piano Pieces, on Turos and Oliver Wehe, who relished his biting wit. Lucinda Childs created Hammerklavier, a set of beautifully gliding dance sequences for Anna Villadolid and Norbert Graf accompanied at the piano by composer Moritz Eggert playing his own composition. The evening also included a dashing Balanchine Stars and Stripes pas de deux (with New York City Ballet principals Margaret Tracey and Nilas Martins); Maurice Bejart's Adagietto, to Mahler, danced by a faunlike Gil Roman; Frederick Ashton's Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan marvelously interpreted by Canadian ballerina Evelyn Hart; and Roland Petit's Der Lustmord ("Sex Murder") pas de deux in a gripping rendering by Steffi Scherzer and Olive Matz.