Ohio Ballet, Joyce Theater, New York, New York, February 10-15, 1998.

JOYCE THEATER FEBRUARY 10-15, 1998 REVIEWED BY ROSE ANNE THOM

To revisit dances from the past in live performance, audiences depend on the enlightened decisions of artistic directors. Such treasures challenge us to imagine distinct times and places, just as the daring visions of new choreographers promise the future. Artistic director Heinz Poll has mastered the balance between past and present in building a repertory for his thirty-year-old Ohio Ballet; his own ballets coexist with those of contemporary choreographers and past masters. For New Yorkers formerly accustomed to the Joffrey Ballet's revivals, Ohio!s visits fill an unfortunate void.

Ohio Ballet understands the dramatic motivation and characterization necessary to enliven reconstructions. The troupe's cohesiveness as an ensemble carries performances of Antony Tudor's 1938 Judgment of Paris, Kurt Jooss's 1932 Big City, and Ruthanna Boris's 1951 Cakewalk. Tudor's hilarious mini-ballet posits three easy women (Satra Stewart, Amy Hayes, and Stephani Achuff) who vie rather halfheartedly for the attention of one nightclub patron (Richard Dickinson). The potent irony of Kurt Weill's music underscores their deadpan expressions, shuffling steps, and pathetic Wicks. (These three must certainly have inspired the notable strippers in Jerome Robbins's choreography for Gypsy.)

Cakewalk draws on the American minstrel show tradition, and the Ohio dancers thoroughly enjoyed the romp. Achuff and Dickinson as Hortense, Queen of the Swamp Lilies, and Harolde, The Dying Poet, amplified the comic allusions to romantic ballet with great finesse, while David Shimotakahara's presence was highly charged as the Interlocutor, although his footwork could have been brighter.

A short ballet, Big City packs a wallop because Jooss's highly stylized choreography distills character to its essence while propelling narrative through evocative spatial de,sign. Among the outstanding performances was Luc Vanier's as The Workman. In every tilting posture of his body and angle of his head, he communicated the combination of oppression and pride that marked his class.

Jose Limon's The Exiles (1950) posed problems. The agony and ecstasy displayed by Vanier and Hayes, as the couple expelled from Eden, seemed imposed on their dancing rather than emanating from the fluidity of the choreography. The use of breath that should motivate each phrase of the choreography was sporadic. Limon's lyricism appears compatible with ballet, but the dynamic use of weight is different and not easily realized. In Poll's Tristeza, his remembrance of German modern dancer Dore Hoyer, Hayes did engage that sense of weight in a tour de force solo that evoked the fierce expression and stunning clarity of 1930s modem dance,

Ohio Ballet's two programs at the Joyce were completed with other examples of Poll's choreography that show a keen, if not inspired, grasp of diverse styles. His classical mode revealed the uneven capabilities of his dancers, less noticeable in the character ballets. Eight by Benny Goodman was too cute, while Triptych, to music by Mendelssohn, was rather prosaic but for the lovely dancing of Melanie Nasser Mooney in a pas de deux with Vanier. Poll's go at Ravel's Bolero posed Xochitl Tejeda De Cerda center stage with ten others gradually taking set places. Their stark, ritualistic vocabulary of gestures and simple turns repeated and accumulated in a look decidedly international and minimalistic at the same time.