CAROLINA DOES TAYLOR-CORBETT.

CAROLINA DOES TAYLOR-CORBETT CAROLINA BALLET MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA APRIL 19-22, 2001

Robert Weiss's splendid Carolina Ballet is less than three years old, but I have been heating for some time of its style and quality, not least in Weiss's obviously popular full-evening works, such as his Carmen. I was therefore delighted to accept a recent invitation to have a look at the company for myself.

Weiss was once a virtuoso principal with New York City Ballet--Balanchine created his Ballo della Regina for Weiss and Merrill Ashley--and for eight years he was artistic director of the Pennsylvania Ballet, another sprig from the Balanchine root. And already Weiss's new Carolina Ballet is exhibiting all those special Balanchinean hallmarks of homogeneity and spirit.

Here the program was made up entirely of works by Broadway veteran choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett--she created last season's Broadway all-dance revue Swing!--including the adorably cheeky Great Galloping Gottschalk, first made for American Ballet Theatre, and Chiaroscuro, originally given by New York City Ballet.

Both were beautifully danced; I well remember ABT's world premiere of Gottschalk in Miami, and it had no more verve or vitality than this. Lilyan Vigo and Mikhail Nikitine danced the lyric pas de deux exquisitely, while Isanusi Garcia and Christopher Rudd brought breathtaking fluency to that bouncy competition duet for two men, Le Bananier.

Chiaroscuro, originally staged for the first of New York City Ballet's Diamond Projects seven years ago, was danced with compelling style and authority; Timour Bourtasenkov brought deep-felt sensitivity to Jock Soto's original role of the man at the retrospective center of his life.

But the major offering was the world premiere of a staging of Carmina Burana, Carl Orff's cantata based on songs of bed and bottle by medieval monks, perhaps best remembered in dance from John Butler's popular and almost abstract account of the Score. Taylor-Corbett, an imaginative and underrated choreographer, takes an unusual narrative approach, telling a story of fate, greed, lust, and reconciliation. There is a blend of German expressionism and classic dance here, and sometimes the story--although more complex, it has something in common with Kurt Jooss's The Big City--loses its way in the dance. But the effect is powerful, and Weiss's dancers--notably Nikitine, Melissa Podcasy, Sarah Hollister, Bourtasenkov, and Garcia--responded to it with terrific dramatic conviction and stylistic strength.