Enter, once more, Sir Fred. (Attitudes).

ONE BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NEW YORK CITY BALLET AND AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE IS THAT CITY BALLET HAS FUNDAMENTALLY A HERITAGE REPERTOIRE, BASED ON THE CLASSICS OF ITS FOUNDING choreographers, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, whereas American Ballet Theatre, like most classic ballet companies, depends upon an eclectic repertoire. Many choreographers have made substantial contributions to that mix--notably Antony Tudor, Leonide Massine, Agnes de Mille, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, and Twyla Tharp. Some people would count Robbins, but although he did make his choreographic debut with Ballet Theatre with Fancy Free, the remainder of his contribution has been merely Les Noces and Facsimile, and revivals of two works not created for the company, Interplay and Other Dances. And nowadays looking at the repertoire, there are two choreographers never really associated with the company, John Cranko and, rather unexpectedly, Sir Frederick Ashton.

I say unexpectedly, yet Ashton's links with ABT go back to 1946, when he revived Les Patineurs for the company, a production he never saw. In fact, he never saw ABT dance any of his works in their repertoire--which also includes Les Rendezvous, Birthday Offering, Symphonic Variations, and new this year, The Dream and La Fille mal gardee. In one sense Ashton's links go back further even than 1946, for in 1939 when Richard Pleasant was planning Ballet Theatre, he wrote to both Ashton and Margot Fonteyn inviting them to join for the first season. He never heard from Ashton, because the letter, eventually returned, had been sent to the wrong address, by which time Pleasant had already received an affirmative reply from his second British choice, Antony Tudor. Years ago I wrote a piece in these columns, speculating what would have happened not only if Ashton had received the letter and left for New York, but if Balanchine had decided in 1933 to remain in London.

The fact is that just as ABT has quite a lot in common in repertoire structure and style--with Britain's Royal Ballet, Ashton would have made a very good principal choreographer and founder of a heritage repertoire. Certainly ABT's new production of Ashton's 1964 The Dream fits like a gossamer glove. It's lovingly staged by the ballet's first Oberon, the supreme classicist Anthony Dowell, a former artistic director of The Royal Ballet and a former star of ABT, and Christopher Carr, a Royal Ballet ballet master. Although given in New York by both The Royal Ballet, first in 1965 with its original cast, and The Joffrey Ballet, new to ABT it drew impassioned bravos. It has been superbly mounted, with familiar sets and costumes by David Walker and John Lanchbery's seamless arrangement of the Mendelssohn incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream. Ashton streamlined Shakespeare's story, concentrating on Oberon and Titania while providing extraordinarily good roles for Puck, Bottom, and Shakespeare's quartet of odd-assorted lovers. The first ABT casts were exceptional.

Then a week later, as refreshing and as welcome as a summer breeze, Ashton's La Fille mal gardee, long on Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie's wish list, positively floated into the ABT repertoire. The audience seemed to luxuriate in the charms of one of the greatest ballets, and to my mind the funniest and most lovable created in the twentieth century. Fille was premiered by The Royal Ballet in 1960 and has been in the repertoire of various American companies, including the Houston, Joffrey, and San Francisco Ballets, and is due to be staged next season by both Boston Ballet and the Pennsylvania Ballet.

McKenzie's wish has been granted with an impeccable staging, mounted by a team headed by the great British character dancer, Alexander Grant, who is an Ashton expert and was a key member of the 1960 cast. Interestingly, only a few weeks earlier Grant had staged Fille for the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. For both, the witty Osbert Lancaster designs are still very much present, as is, of course, Lanchbery's brilliant patchwork adaptation of the 1828 Ferdinand Herold score. Now, the ballet itself is in a way almost as old as ballet history, for in 1789, called Le Ballet de la paille, it was one of the very first ballets to deal with ordinary people rather than the kings, emperors, gods, and goddesses who had dominated the earlier ballets.

Ashton's version uses the 1789 story with bits of the traditional mime that had come down through Russian versions, but then he completely rechoreographed it in his own vivid style. During this first season ABT showed off four different casts in the leading roles, and I must say that the ballet looked better than it did with The Royal Ballet when it visited Washington's Kennedy Center last year. So--and it's rare that a critic can say this--no praise could be too high for the whole company. American Ballet Theatre and McKenzie, with this and The Dream, seem to have found a new high.

Now, possibly McKenzie is prepared to seize the initiative originally taken by his old alma mater, The Joffrey Ballet, in adopting Ashton, along with Tudor, of course, as its major twentieth-century historic sources. This comes at a time when The Royal Ballet itself seems to be turning away from Ashton--this season it is staging only A Month in the Country, and its director, Ross Stretton, so far appears to have little awareness of Ashton's international stature, although public pressure will obviously to some extent change this view. Yet the year 2004 (which happens to be the centenary of both Balanchine and Ashton) might offer ABT a golden opportunity to stage an Ashton/Tudor festival while City Ballet is naturally absorbed with its Balanchine festivities.

Senior Consulting Editor Clive Barnes, who covers dance and theater for the New York Post, has contributed to Dance Magazine since 1956.