School of American Ballet, Juilliard Theater, June 7 & 9, 1997.

There was only one awkward position evident from the triple bill presented at the thirty-third Annual Workshop Performances of the School of American Ballet. And it wasn't onstage. Faced with the program's impressive range, how was an audience member to decide which bad the greater breadth -- Balanchine's choreography or the school's pool of talent?

The answer had to be a draw. With a program consisting of Divertimento No. 15 (to Mozart), Symphony in Three Movements (to Stravinsky) and Harlequinade Divertissement (to selections from Riccardo Drigo's ballet score), the students had challenges that made the very word seem an understatement.

With dancers this young and fresh and of such generally high caliber, singling out one over another borders on the abusive. But ballet is not child's play, so I'll emphasize some of the higher high points.

Suki Schorer's dewy staging of Divertimento revealed its garden of five leading female dancers with an array of six budding ballerinas -- there was one alternate cast in the third variation. The sweet, speedy dancing of sixteen-year-old Lindy Mandradjieff was especially notable for her golden aplomb in the most prominent role. Each of the three attentive cavaliers proved winning; the leggy Stephen Hanna was their gifted leader.

Symphony in Three Movements throbbed with a world of intense life, reminiscent of a drop of mountain water on a microscope's slide, in Susan Pilarre's staging. Darius Crenshaw was particularly invigorating and supple in the role originated by Edward Villella.

In the carnival array of commedia dell'arte characters of Harlequinade, the ranges of both Balanchine and SAB grew wider still. (Garielle Whittle shared staging credit along with Schorer and Pilarre.) Two especially gifted sixteen-year-olds -- Janie Taylor and Adam Hendrickson -- made Columbine and Harlequin come alive with remarkable depth. Taylor fluoresced as though she were some ultraviolet daylily, her limbs reaching like willowy stamens toward the sun. Hendrickson, a sloe-eyed fox, bounded about like an irrepressible scamp, ever one step ahead of any foolish attempts to contain or restrain his appetite for life and art.