Oregon Ballet Theatre.

OREGON BALLET THEATRE KELLER AUDITORIUM, PORTLAND, OR OCTOBER 11--18, DECEMBER 11-27, 2003, FEBRUARY 28-MARCH 6, 2004 NEWMARK THEATRE, PORTLAND, OR MAY 7-22, 2004

For his first season, Oregon Ballet Theater Artistic Director Christopher Stowell selected ballets that reflect his training, performing experience, and discriminating taste. Except for Serenade, all of them works by Frederick Ashton, Paul Taylor, Helgi Tomasson, and Kent Stowell, his own Adin, and George Balanchine's The Nutcracker--were company premieres. Stowell's favorable disposition toward choreographers of his own generation was evident in his choice of new works by former San Francisco Ballet colleagues Yuri Possokhov and Julia Adam, along with the North American premiere of Christopher Wheeldon's There Where She Loved.

For the dancers, those chosen by former Artistic Director James Canfield and the eight brought in by Stowell (including some much-needed technically strong men), the repertoire demanded new styles and techniques, and particularly, an aptitude for comedy.

Possokhov's Firebird, designed by Yuri Zhukov, is a charming "storybook" production with the feel of a Persian miniature. Its affectionately humorous twenty-first-century conception has some cartoon touches, such as child monsters in spider costumes and slow-motion running with Kaschei's egg. More a figure of mischief than evil, Kaschei, danced with catlike virtousity by Kester Cotton (alternating with Karl Vakili), commands nearly equal billing with the Firebird, a role given a more avian than human interpretation on opening night by Yuka Iino, and just the reverse by Alison Roper. Possokhov mixes classical choreography with Russian folk dance motifs, adding a pas de trois for the Firebird, the Princess, and Ivan that changes the title character's motivation for helping Ivan kill Kaschei from bargaining for her freedom to illogical love for the loutish young man. Newcomers Paul de Strooper and Artur Sultanov made splendid Ivans, technically and dramatically, and Tracy Taylor and Kathi Martuza, as the Princess, captured Ivan's heart with their engaging innocence.

Adin is a set of skillfully crafted pas de deux to Rachmaninoff songs, most of them orchestrated by company Music Director Niel DePonte, who led the live accompaniment for an evening that included Serenade. Lush, yielding choreography for "The Muse" maximized Martuza's lyricism and emphasized Matthew Boyes' partnering skills in an intensely romantic waltz. "The Pied Piper" capitalized on the playful wit and precise speed of Anne Mueller and Vakili, who have been dancing brilliantly together all season, especially in Duo Concertant. "Vocalise" showcased the expressive classicism of Gavin Larsen and Sultanov, and the concluding "Let Us Leave, My Sweet," for all six dancers, resembled Matisse's two paintings of dancers in a circle.

There Where She Loved, Wheeldon's elaborate exploration of partnering, what men do to women, and how he imagines they feel about it, is also set to songs, these by Frederic Chopin alternating with Kurt Weill. Made for The Royal Ballet in 2000, the work shows Wheeldon's inventiveness with the classical vocabulary. But most of the lifts look more gimmicky than innovative, such as when a dancer's leg hooks around her partner's neck or she swings pendulum-fashion with her legs shaped like a bell, or when four men join forces to hoist her toward the flies. The work dial produce some gorgeous performances however. Partnered by de Strooper as a cad, the rejected Roper in Weill's "Je Ne t'Aime Pas" gave ah emotionally shattered cast to the choreography that was quite different from Larsen's enraged dancing with the less caddish Sultanov.

Adam's inventiveness in Il Nodo, danced to a taped collage of Renaissance music, is far less self-conscious. The playful work is packed with choreographic ideas that have the dancers, costumed by Christine Darch in black and-white abstractions of Renaissance garb, moving like puppets or wooden dolls in ah expert visualization of the rough-hewn sound of the music. Ropes play ah integral part, becoming first the structure for an intricately danced cat's cradle, then the reins by which one dancer pulls three others ill an imaginary cart, then a forest in which dancers play hide-and-seek.

Ashton's 1931 Facade, a spoof of English manners dependent on the popular culture of the day, demands a different style. OBT's dancers were astonishingly good, whether camping it up or playing it subtle, especially the tour who performed the tango pasadoble (Taylor and de Strooper opening night and, subsequently, Roper and Sultanov). The Balanchine works included a too-careful "Rubies," from Jewels. It fell to 15-year-old apprentice Leann Underwood, in a joyous performance of the lead in the OBT school's Concerto Barocco, to show us what is meant by Balanchine's musicality, speed, precision, and attack.

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