ROYAL NEW ZEALAND BALLET.

ROYAL NEW ZEALAND BALLET WESTPAC TRUST ST. JAMES THEATRE, WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND MAY 30-JUNE 6; AUGUST 26-30, 1998

The Royal New Zealand Ballet's new production of The Sleeping Beauty by Danish choreographer Kim Brandstrup pleased the followers of ballet tradition by retaining much of Petipa's grand pas for the soloists. The outstanding Russian guest artists--Anna Dorosch and Aidar Akhmetov--were poetic and effervescent by turn.

There were also subtle layers of interest for those theatergoers who want an evening-length ballet to steer clear of cliches. All the familiar divertissements are gone, replaced by a corps of dramatically convincing courtiers superbly attired by designer Craig Givens in seventeenth-century dress when Aurora goes to sleep and eighteenth-century dress when she wakes up. Carabosse, by witty contrast, strides about like Anjelica Huston in the comical film The Witches. The company hopes to take this production on a tour of the U.S. next autumn.

RNZB's most recent season featured a triple bill. 'Tis Goodly Sport, an early work (1971) by English choreographer Jonathan Taylor, proved a riotous romp set to bawdy Elizabethan dance music. It drew hilarious performances from Sonya Behrnes as a distracted lover, Shannon Dawson as a cross-dressing Man on the Town, and Ou Lu in a treasure of a solo to the tune, "Robin, gentle Robin." The costuming and lighting were too somber, but everything else was as sweet as syllabub.

A new work, Smashing Sweet Vixen, was commissioned from New Zealander Shona McCullagh and composer Gareth Farr. The percussion trio Strike had a lively role interacting with ten female dancers, who were tested to the limits of virtuosity in a danced display of assertive behavior. Given a popular reception, particularly by younger audience members, Smashing Sweet Vixen was what you might call choreography with altitude.

The central work on the program was Jiri Kylian's extraordinary Soldatenmis (1980), to the haunting "Field Mass" by Martinu. Kylian, artistic director of Netherlands Dance Theater, selected this work as especially suitable for RNZB to perform, and it did not waste the compliment. The ballet, most ably staged by Roslyn Anderson, was far and away the most powerful work I have ever seen the company dance.

Twelve men are assembled. A battle of some sort is imminent. They are frightened. They know that there is to be no happy ending. Soldatenmis is an abstract work with the impact of Kurt Jooss's 1932 The Green Table, representing all the waste of young men who ever died in war.

The dancers' task is somehow to find the strength and style to perform contemporary movement that was obviously not part of their training. Dawson, only recently made a soloist, gave the performance of his life. His upper-torso contractions seemed to be set off by shrapnel. Kylian's sequence of jete-cabriole-coupe-chasse on a circular path around the stage has this slight young dancer airborne yet suddenly felled by his own leg overtaking the other, bringing him down like a wounded deer. Again and again he leaps up--and is brought down. Eventually, all the dancers share his fate. The result is gripping, and these performances of Kylian's fine choreography will not soon be forgotten.