The Pennsylvania Ballet.

THE PENNSYLVANIA BALLET ACADEMY OF MUSIC PHILADELPHIA, PA JUNE 4-13, 2004

Like that notorious little girl with the curl, when Christopher Wheeldon's new staging of Swan Lake is good, it's very, very good, but when it's bad, it's horrid. In honor of its fortieth anniversary, the company and its artistic director, Roy Kaiser, splashed out with an act of wild conservatism. It was conservative because any production of Swan Lake is, at least on paper, a sale bet, and wild because it entrusted the entire million-dollar-plus production to America's most acclaimed young choreographer, who had had virtually no experience (of preconceptions) in mounting a nineteenth-century classic. Presumably, Wheeldon acquired something of the Petipa/Ivanov tradition from his days as a member of Britain's Royal Ballet; he has adopted and adapted many of the best-loved chunks from that benchmark 1895 production.

Wheeldon decided on a mildly revolutionary approach to the old classic not starting completely from scratch a la Mats Ek or Matthew Bourne but more in the style of John Neumeier's 1976 approach for the Hamburg Ballet, which set the work in mad King Ludwig's swan-conscious Bavaria. Wheeldon's point of departure is Degas and the Paris Opera Ballet. He starts with extraordinarily apt Degas-like images, which fade into the company of that period rehearsing the first act of Swan Lake. It is watched by a sinister Patron, who later transmogrifies into the image of Von Rothbart when, after the rehearsal, the young man assigned to dance Siegfried finds himself carried away into some swan-world vision of Odette, his ideal woman.

We are then transported back to reality in the traditional Ballroom Scene, envisaged as a decadent masked ball for the roues of the Jockey Club, who use the ballet as a private seraglio. Here Rothbart tempts and taunts the hero with a real-life Odile, the woman who dances Odette. The last act takes him and us back to the shattered dream, when our disillusioned Siegfried encounters at the final curtain his love back in real life amid a group of Degas dancers.

Even as a concept it doesn't function. The story has been made unnecessarily complex, and the choreographic additions, especially in the ghastly Ballroom Scene, are mostly silly, insensitive, and vulgar. The exception is the last act, where Wheeldon is at the top of his choreographic game, showing his genius with dances of sweet seriousness that magically fuse with the music. The permanent, boxy set of three translucent walls by Adrianne Lobel is ingenious but restricts the dance area; however, the Degas style costumes by Jean-Marc Puissant are a delight, while Natasha Katz's lighting subtly guides the story.

The ballet, given three casts of principals, proved decently enough danced at a creditable second-tier level; the women, however, markedly outmatched the men. The first cast in the Petipa pas de trois included an apprentice, Jermel Johnson, of considerable emerging but as yet immature talent.

The best of the three main casts was the oldest: a beautifully professional Dede Barfield (giving her retirement performance) and the veteran Alexei Borovik. The other two Odette/Odiles, Riolama Lorenzo and Arantxa Ochoa, showed promise, while their Siegfrieds, Zachary Hench--more of a character dancer than a classicist--and the efficient James Ady, hardly set the ballet on fire.

This Swan Lake is perhaps destined more for a few seasons than for the history books.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.paballet.org