STILL WAITING FOR WONDERS.

STILL WAITING FOR WONDERS BALLET TECH COMPANY AND KIDS DANCE THE JOYCE THEATER NEW YORK, NEW YORK MARCH 21-APRIL 23, 2000

REVIEWED BY DORIS HERING

Those of us who had the good fortune to see Eliot Feld's initial works for American Ballet Theatre more than thirty years ago, and the ones he did for his own early companies, know the potential of his artistry. What he prefers to give us now is a cleverness that draws upon external gimmicks or is simply an embellishment on the dancers' everyday lives.

A gimmick supreme was used in Mending. It was an oblong Plexiglas structure in which Damian Woetzel, guesting from New York City Ballet, was enclosed. Because he is a dancer of enormous strength as well as sweetness, Woetzel resembled a William Blake angel in descent, but the method of descent verged on the choreographically sadistic. Clad in a dance belt, he painstakingly made his way, supporting parts of his body on pegs like those used to teach mountaineering. The physical danger persistently tore one's attention from the theme of a man trying in vain to regain contact with a lost love (Patricia Tuthill), who sidled and circled beneath his iceberg. Composer Michael Gordon provided the siren-laden score; Feld designed the far-from-tender trap.

In Coup de Couperin, a premiere, Feld did offer his dancers a challenge beyond the merely athletic. To the baroque weavings of composers Francois Couperin and Marin Marais, it joined Willa Kim's acid-hued takeoff on Louis XIV garb and Feld's laser-lively musings on period steps.

Nickemil Conception, Jason Jordan, Armand Pretlow and Laumonte Williams were dashing in a pas de ciseaux variation, and Ha-Chi Yu was all playful energy in her sequence of smaller steps. There was also a nice touch of the Feld humor in a storm sequence in which the women, resembling low-flying clouds, swept on with white veils over their heads, only to have the men snatch the veils off and don them like Red Baron scarves.

Feld also likes to make voluptuous solos for a chosen female. The most poetic of these were Kote and Echo, originally devised for Buffy Miller. Patricia Tuthill now dances them, along with Cherokee Rose. While she has the requisite endurance, she has yet to imprint her own personal aura on the steps.

Ballet Tech consists of alumni of the Ballet Tech School, whose students are drawn from the New York City education system. Kids Dance is a second company whose participants are younger. Since Feld tends to derive his ideas from their everyday lives, he does little to widen their interpretive range. They inspire him, but I'm not sure the reverse is true.

In his second premiere, nodrog doggo, seven males with lights attached to their hands resembled a wedge of motorcyclists on a nighttime foray. Michael Gordon's insistent rhythms found them in a simian crouch, staring, focusing the beams on their faces and crotches, and finally flashing the lights on and off. (FYI: "nodrog" is Gordon in reverse; "doggo" is slang for "in hiding.")

Both Aurora I and Aurora II used inclines down which the dancers slid on various part of their anatomies; Joggers dealt with variations on running; Medium:Rare found soloist Armand Pretlow hurtling himself from trampolines; Simon Sez involved the younger company in playground structures--familiar territory, all.

The youngsters in the audience responded more enthusiastically to ballets that did not recall their everyday world. George Balanchine's Tarantella received the most applause. Was it the sparkling Gottschalk music, Willa Kim's storybook-Italian costumes; or the brilliant clarity of the choreography as interpreted by Jessica Fields and Jonathan Sulaiman? There is much to be said for theatricality.

Almost as popular with the young audience was Meshugana Dance, in which Feld captured the garrulity of klezmer music. Its insouciance recalled the dew of earlier Feld, like The Jig is Up.

It's hard to believe that the maker of these two dances was also responsible for two works of questionable taste. Paper Tiger recalled the 1930s in its condescending image of black people smooching and strutting. As for Felix: the ballet, it was again one of those gimmick-laden landscapes featuring skateboards, outsized beach balls, Valkyrie breastplates and a floppy octopus arm. Its sexual allusions made Feld seem less mature than his dancers, especially when, in a mop wig and rumpled clothes, he clambered over the stage apron to join them in a bow.

Nobody says you have to wear a business suit to direct a ballet company, but it does help to know who's the adult and who are the kids, particularly when everyone's still waiting for the Feld of thirty years ago to soar.