SWAINS, SWANS GET ROYAL.

THE ROYAL BALLET OPERA HOUSE JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS WASHINGTON, D.C.

JUNE 5-10, 2001, THE WANG THEATER BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS JUNE 13-16, 2001

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Do they? Always? This extraordinarily brief Royal Ballet tour--just twelve performances in all--was also unusual in omitting both New York and the West Coast from its itinerary, and in being the last tour under the directorship of Sir Anthony Dowell. But perhaps even more significantly, the actual character of the company seemed to have changed since its last visit just four years ago. This change has probably been gradual--but certainly what, on its first excursion here in 1949, was fundamentally an English company is now a European one.

I caught seven performances--one mixed bill and four of La Fille mal gardee in Washington and two of Swan Lake in Boston--and of the fourteen dancers I saw in leading roles, only four were British. Also, The Royal Ballet, while not at its peak, is clearly on the upward curve rather than the downward, and, under Dowell's curatorship, the essential Royal Ballet style seems to have been pretty much maintained.

The programs in Washington were entirely devoted to the works of choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton, at the express demand of the Kennedy Center presenter. The mixed bill was a mixed blessing. One of the odd aspects of the Dowell regime has been the redesigning of Ashton ballets, and here Les Rendezvous was given spectacularly ugly and unsuitable new scenery and costumes by Anthony Ward, which made it look like a bus-and-truck tour, of The Boy Friend. The dancing was, however, moderately good, with Johan Kobborg outstanding, but not all that stylish.

Style, oddly enough, was also somewhat absent from Symphonic Variations, although in the Fonteyn role, the company's new wunderkind, Alina Cojocaru, had an attractive mysteriousness, even though partnered by an inadequate and barely competent Nigel Burley. Marguerite and Armand, that former carriage royal for Fonteyn and Nureyev, works very well for the company's current diva, Sylvie Guillem, partnered by a nicely ardent Jonathan Cope, who was in his way just as good as Nicolas Le Riche, whom I had seen earlier at Covent Garden (see review by Margaret Willis, Dance Magazine, June 2000, page 56) and who danced the first two performances here in Washington.

Leanne Benjamin and Adam Cooper offered a strangely distanced rendering of the exotic, subtly erotic Thais pas de deux. What proved far more thrilling was the unannounced appearance of the 58-year-old Dowell himself, with his legendary partner Antoinette Sibley, now 62, dancing together onstage almost certainly for, the last time in the Undemanding but poetically poignant Soupirs, set to Elgar music, which Ashton created on them for a long-forgotten gala (see Attitudes, page 118). Ballet historians might want to remember this date--June 7, 2001.

Ashton's La Fille mal gardee is a twentieth-century masterpiece and one of the great comedy ballets of all time. It was decently and boisterously performed by four completely different leading casts--the least interesting being the first, Miyako Yoshida and Johan Persson. The others--Mara Galeazzi with Kobborg, Sarah Wildor with American Ballet Theatre's Ethan Stiefel, and Belinda Hatley with Stuart Cassidy--all had their merits, with Stiefel the most brilliant and Hatley and Cassidy (himself technically weaker than either Kobborg or Stiefel) the most stylish. Jonathan Howells was easily the best of the four Alains, and I found none of four Widow Simones acceptable, with Alastair Marriott less unacceptable than the other three. David Drew now cuts a splendid figure in the old Leslie Edwards role of Farmer Thomas.

While the Kennedy Center insisted on all Ashton, the Boston promoters, the Fleet Celebrity Series, faced with filling the huge Wang Theater, perhaps wisely minimized their risks asking for Swan Lake and nothing but Swan Lake. Dowell's production, dating from 1987, keeps pretty much to the standard 1895 Petipa and Ivanov version (although it inserts a ghastly David Bintley waltz in Act I). Fascinatingly, in its lovely scenery and glamorous costumes by Yolanda Sonnabend, instead of placing the ballet in some Gothic never-never land, this version plonks it down in a Ruritanian Russia around, yes, 1895! I think it works. Some of my colleagues differ.

The corps de ballet performances were exemplary--this company still has the unforced style and discipline of a major troupe. However, some of the solo dancing was flaccid (both performances of the Act I pas de trois, but particularly the matinee led by Hubert Essakow, were substandard) but the principal roles were sharply presented. At the final matinee, a somewhat opaque Zenaida Yanowsky as Odette/Odile, partnered by a staunchly effective Cope, suffered from the dead-march tempi favored by conductor Philip Gammon.

In the evening, with the terrific conductor Andrea Quinn on the rostrum, the music glittered, raced, and shouted (see "Music, Maestra," Dance Magazine, July, page 40). And here the technically perfect and, as yet, emotionally evasive Tamara Rojo and the dazzling, gallant, high-powered Carlos Acosta mowed down all before them. Rojo, whom I've seen dance a finely shadowed Giselle with the company, needs more time with Odette/Odile. But she is a major ballerina in the making. Acosta, as a premier danseur, already has it made.