Pacific Northwest Ballet.

APRIL 2-6 & 11, 1996 REVIEWED BY MARTHA ULLMAN WEST

"What was the point of that?" asked a man behind me at the Seattle Center Opera House as the curtain rang down on a charming, precise performance of George Balanchine's Valse Fantaisie one night in April.

And well might he ask. Valse Fantaisie, a delicious pastry that revealed a new and welcome fearlessness in the way this company dances Balanchine, was preceded by an excerpt from a piece about life after death, and followed by a choreographic response to the AIDS quilt. The former work, dedicated to Christopher Gillis and Clark Tippet, is Lila York's Rapture, a vision of a heaven where people move with energy as explosive as a meteor shower, and as fleeting. York's command of her craft is evident from the opening, when the dancers rise slowly from the floor and almost immediately speed into fast runs and turns, looking like heavenly confetti tossed by an eternal breeze.

In solos, York maximizes the dancers, physicality and appearance. Tall, leggy Ariana Lallone looks like a colt as she bursts across the stage in an outpouring of joyous, sublime dancing. In fact, all the dancers in the cast performed York's modern movement with rapturous ease, with Benjamin Houk a standout in his solo. In the ensemble movement York also knows when to slow the pace and shift the patterns, including a running wedge of dancers on the diagonal that carries considerable emotional weight. The Prokofiev score (from the Piano Concerto No. 3) was well played by pianist Dianne Children and the ballet orchestra, under the baton of Allan Dameron.

One of two premieres on the program, Lynne Taylor-Corbett's The Quilt, is a thoroughly predictable, slick piece of work. Often hackneyed, it narrowly misses kitschiness. Again, the dancers are superb, particularly Lallone, in the only dancing that comes close to expressing the rage felt by most who either have the disease or have lost loved ones to its ravages.

In a different context, Arlene Croce has said she can't review someone she feels sorry for. One suspects she'd have little trouble judging these healthy dancers. Little in the movement suggests they are failing physically, though Patricia Barker at one point is carried across Phillip Otto's shoulders, like a sacrificial lamb. For my part, reviewing this piece is made difficult by my pity for a choreographer who has the bad judgment to offer up this commercial representation of a project that is a heartfelt celebration of lives cut short.

The Quilt does have its moments. The creation of the quilt itself is suggested with a movement metaphor that has Barker sliding through Otto's rounded arms, like thread going through the eye of a needle. The ending is brilliant, as blank quilt panels descend onto the stage, one for each dancer, obliterating all in brightly colored doom.

Kent Stowell's Anima Mundi, a premiere created in collaboration with composer Richard Danielpour, concluded the company's last repertoire program of the season. As a showcase for the dancers, replete with Stowell's hip-slung, speedy choreographic style, it's just fine, with a stunning set by Adrianne Lobel that looks like a Franz Kline painting with color.

Only the music disappoints. Danielpour's commissioned score is a melange of twentieth-century musical styles with no focus and no consistent theme. This made creating the movement pretty tough for Stowell, who knows his craft well, but whose work, like Balanchine's, is always "about" the music. His attempt to give focus to Anima with a pas de deux couple, who appear periodically, simply added to the confusion, though Louise Nadeau and Paul Gibson can make a gentle stroll across the stage look interesting.