New York City Ballet.

NEW YORK CITY BALLET NEW YORK STATE THEATER, NEW YORK, NY JANUARY 4-FFBRUARY 27, 2005

The highlight of the first half of New York City Ballet's winter season was unquestionably Christopher Wheeldon's new After the Rain. The ballet premiered on January 22, as part of the company's annual "New Combinations Evening" celebrating George Balanchine's birthday--this year, also the night of an impressive blizzard. Those hardy audience members who braved the outing were rewarded: Wheeldon's 11th ballet for the company, set to two pieces by Arvo Part (Tabula Rasa and Spiegel im Spiegel), is so full of beauty and invention that it's a shock to learn that it is only 15 minutes long.

The first section opens dramatically, with three couples (Jock Soto, Edwaard Liang, Ask la Cour, with, respectively, Wendy Whelan, Sofiane Sylve, Maria Kowroski) dressed in silvery blue-grey unitards creating a striking tableau to the opening chords. The women plunge forward over the men, then sweep their legs up high to the side, like the hands of a clock. Wheeldon goes on to skillfully deploy the dancers to Part's bell-like tones, folding them into unison groupings, then dissolving them as easily, making us aware of their geometries of form both as individuals and as a larger whole.

In the second section, Whelan and Soto reappear, she in a flesh-pink leotard and soft ballet slippers, he bare-chested in white trousers. They might be dreaming; they might be a dream. Soto holds Whelan away from his body; like thistledown, she floats from one position to another, scarcely aware of him yet somehow connected, even dependent. Wheeldon doesn't make it too pretty: Whelan's whisper-thin body occasionally contorts into odd positions that Soto gently handles. At the end he slides under her arched back to form a comforting final resting place. After the Rain is a clear tribute to the soon-to-retire Soto, who is often lauded for his partnering skills. Fittingly, it is also a tribute to the art of the pas de deux.

The pas de deux as incarnated by the tango is central to Peter Martins' much improved version of Todo Buenos Aires, to music by Astor Piazzolla. Guest artist Julio Bocca's restrained verve and intensity, seen in both his dances with the women (Darci Kistler and Whelan) and in the four-man ensemble, seem to have inspired Martins to create a more structurally interesting and emotionally centered work.

Another highlight came in the form of the beautifully danced revival of Jerome Robbins' Goldberg Variations (1971), last seen here five years ago. The 80-minute work, set to Bach's glorious set of piano variations (masterfully played by Cameron Grant), opens with a couple in period costume and ends with the same pair in contemporary practice attire--a suggestion that besides being a magnificent suite of dances, the work is also an evocation of ballet's history and conventions.

In Part 1, newly promoted principal Ashley Bouder stood out for her technical mastery and musicality, just as she did in almost everything else she performed. Her dazzling debut in Ballo della Regina was a marvel of speed, precision, and phrasing, her high-kicking jumps and plush landings in La Source both playful and joyous. The other female standout was Sofiane Sylve, whose magisterial dancing in Cortege Hongrois on opening night made it clear (as if it weren't already) that she is that rarest of creatures: a true ballerina. Sylve has been dancing exceptionally ever since she joined NYCB in 2003, but she appears to have settled into the company and the repertoire and made them her own. Lucky for us.

By the second half of the winter season, galas, premieres, and unveilings were over, leaving the audience free to concentrate on the dancers. And what pleasure many gave.

This was the last chance to see NYCB's two "grand old men," Jock Soto and Peter Boal (who, like Soto, will retire in June), before acute regret sets in. On the darkened stage of Christopher Wheeldon's Liturgy, Soto swung his arms in unison with Wendy Whelan to the edgy, mournful phrases of Arvo Part's Fratres for Violin, Strings, and Percussion. With his shining black hair, matinee-idol face, and strangely articulate barrel body, he looked like the anchor of the world. Yet he managed, in an ever-more-acrobatic pas de deux, an unearthly communion with his tuning fork of a ballerina.

Then there was Boal, warming the jazzy dissonances of Balanchine's Apollo with the human intelligence of his dancing. Now in dancer middle-age, he has turned a once-predictable aura of "I'm so nice" into a strong suit. Sitting on his godly stool, his Apollo seemed pained to reject two muse-supplicants (they run offstage in shame) but delighted to choose Terpsichore (Wendy Whelan), the third. Impulsiveness informed their pas de deux, especially the kneeling part when they offer open palms as if offering confessions. And in the mounting solemnity of the finale, Boal's quick stoop to lay his cheek in the muses' joined palms signaled that comfort is precious even to young gods.

Like Apollo, the "Emeralds" section of Jewels came to life this season in a way it hasn't for years. Rachel Rutherford and Edwaard Liang, the first principal couple, danced with quiet urgency, Rutherford holding split-second poses against the music's flow. A supported penche comes to mind, when her plunging profile showed chiseled against the new backdrop's inhuman green. (Nor is Rutherford afraid of the famous hands-and-wrists solo, in which she talked to Faure's lush sounds.) And when the second ballerina entered alone, the mystical hush deepened further. It was that Bengal tiger of a ballerina, Sofiane Sylve, stalking onstage on steely pointes, as if France itself had come to explicate this most elusive of texts.

What the audience wants from a dancer is dancing, which sounds simple but isn't. Plenty of City Ballet's principals perform steps well, but dancing involves something more, like throwing energy into the music or listening acutely to its ebb and flow. Whatever this mysterious verb really entails, the authentic version of it releases a dancer's unique aura. Ashley Bouder, performing frequently for injured colleagues in February, gave all her ballets a clear, confident, mischievous energy. She made you think of green apples or spring wine. Carla Korbes, pinch-hitting for someone in Martins' Concerto for Two Solo Pianos, resembled a cat--a feminine cat who swallowed the cream. And Scan Suozzi, in the corps of almost every ballet, reminded you, each time your eye found him, of an arrow shot into the air, going straight to the mark.

For more information: www.nycballet.com