Diamond in the Rough.

New York City Ballet New York State Theater New York New York April 30-June 30, 2002

New York City Ballet saluted the tenth anniversary of the Diamond Project, which had already commissioned forty ballets for the company, by cramming eight new DP works and fifteen DP revivals into its spring 2002 season. (Two novelties from Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins were performed only at the May 8 gala and were therefore off limits for review.) The project was initiated by the Irene Diamond Fund to maintain City Ballet's reputation as a truly creative performing arts institution with a repertoire of masterpieces to share with the world. This season proved a continual reminder that neither George Balanchine nor Jerome Robbins--nor their equal--had ever accepted a DP commission.

A performance of Kevin O'Day's 1994 Viola Alone ... proved typical. Jennie Somogyi and Alexander Ritter were excellent in this work for four dancers and three chairs, set to Paul Hindemith viola sonatas, but the work was simply crushed by Robbins's Opus 19: The Dreamer, with Peter Boal and Jenifer Ringer, which followed after a mere pause. After intermission, Balanchine's Vienna Waltzes ground it to powder. Kyra Nichols's recreation of the iconic Suzanne Farrell role in Waltzes proved one of the season's great satisfactions.

Resident choreographer Christopher Wheeldon easily took the premiere honors with Morphoses, a suitably dark, spare, and distinctive pas de quatre to Gyorgy Ligeti's String Quartet No. 1 (lovingly performed in the pit by the young ensemble Flux). Wheeldon needed no props, no corps, and no scenery but for a few long, vertical rectangles of colored light that mysteriously expanded and contracted in the upstage gloom. The virtuoso solo went to highflying Damian Woetzel, the most intricate partnering to rock-solid Jock Soto, and custom-made solos of spiky clarity to Wendy Whelan and Alexandra Ansanelli. Wheeldon isn't afraid to employ a familiar device instead of a glib, "creative" novelty. Morphoses concluded with the dancers retracing their steps to their supine positions of the beginning. It's a familiar way to achieve formal clarity, but let me tell you, it still works.

Other DP premieres weren't as waste-less, powerful, or rewarding but looked just as gloomy. Although lighting designer Mark Stanley manipulated the murk ingeniously, a dour sameness prevailed at other premieres because the choreography rarely proved distinctive. Vespro by Mario Bigonzetti, artistic director of Italy's Aterballetto, will be remembered as the work that began with Benjamin Millepied on top of a grand piano, being played by composer Bruno Moretti, and continued with his assaulting the keyboard with elbows and feet. (Moretti's amorphous music wasn't that bad.) The other dancers, who had to stand onstage awaiting their turn, couldn't top Benjamin.

No dancer interfered with pianist Gordon Grant's graceful playing of Handel keyboard works for Twilight Courante by Stephen Baynes, resident choreographer of Australian Ballet. The ominous lighting and the fact that Whelan was left lying onstage unattended--a wry, miscalculated reference to Serenade?--suggested that something might be going on among its eight dancers. Nothing developed however. Baynes gave Millepied a demanding solo that he tossed off with aplomb, but his topnotch cast, which included Nikolaj Hubbe, Sebastien Marcovici, Somogyi, and Ritter, was often treated like a corps and set to dancing the same steps together. Shouldn't such unanimity--as opposed to canonic sequence, say--be employed in a finale?

Something plotlike also intruded into corps member Melissa Barak's If by Chance, set to Shostakovich's Sonata in D Minor for Cello and Piano. After dancing workmanlike neoclassic steps, the omnipresent Millepied suddenly kissed Pascale van Kipnis. She initially spurned him but they soon left the stage together, causing dismay among the encircling corps. Fortunately, they returned in time for the theme-and-variations finale. Barak didn't betray the promise of her earlier ballet to Telemann with this mush but she didn't fulfill it either.

Miriam Mahdaviani, another choreographer who had danced in the corps, was represented among DP revivals with Correlazione (1994), a genial work to Arcangelo Corelli that contrasted neoclassic angularity with baroque orderliness. Unfortunately, her premiere, In the Mi(d)st, marked a humorless retreat. Fashionably set to two composers (Oliver Knussen and Aaron Jay Kernis), it also fell back on treating principals like corps members. James Fayette, Somogyi, Hubbe, and Ansanelli deserved better, for as this season repeatedly demonstrated, City Ballet dancers can handle anything any choreographer can throw at them.

Certainly a stunning solo for corps member Aesha Ash was the high point of principal Albert Evans's Haiku. Its John Cage score was musically negligible and Evans's choreography was dominated by sensational 180-degree partnered splits for the women, but Ash's solo revealed her to be a gifted technician and striking performer. She provided the answer to W.B. Yeats's haunting question, "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" In a DP work, no problem.

As for the DP revivals, reencountering those was like meeting fellow graduates at your high school reunion: There were so few of them you ever wanted to see again. The DP Class of '97 was exceptionally varied. Angelin Preljocaj's La Stravaganza reminded us how fortunate NYCB is to have so little Eurotrash in its repertoire. However, Robert La Fosse's Concerto in Five Movements, while overpopulated and proudly indebted to Balanchine-Stravinsky collaborations, often did well by Prokofiev's rarely heard Concerto No. 5 in G Major for Piano and Orchestra. Your reaction to Christopher d'Amboise's Circle of Fifths depends on your tolerance for Philip Glass's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. D'Amboise often found worthy equivalents for its pulsating reiteration, unlike Helgi Tomasson, whose Prism (2000) was an arid manipulation of neoclassical cliches arrogantly imposed on Beethoven's Concerto No. 1 in C Major for Piano and Orchestra.

After these dreary assignments, NYCB dancers returned to their great repertoire with extra zest and dedication. With Whelan and Soto or Maria Kowroski and Evans performing its pas de deux, Balanchine's 1957 Agon looked like the boldest twenty-first-century work of the season.