The Three Musketeers.

ROYAL BALLET OF FLANDERS STADSSCHOUWBURG, ANTWERP, BELGIUM FEBRUARY 2-11, 1995 REVIEWED BY LUISA MOFFETT

Every fall in Antwerp the Royal Ballet of Flanders opens with a mixed bill, reserving its annual evening-length production of a classic or a new work for the winter season. This year's programs began with a successful evening entitled "Antwerp--New York" that juxtaposed the Balanchine style of American choreographer Christopher d'Amboise, whose work was being shown for the first time in Europe, against the neoexpressionism of the company's resident choreographer, Antwerp's own Danny Rosseel. Artistic director Robert Denvers has followed this up with a lighthearted swashbuckler of a ballet that keeps the men in the company busy from beginning to end, leaping, fencing, jumping, and horsing around while, for once, the women in the corps de ballet must content themselves with a few short sections.

Andre Prokovsky choreographed The Three Musketeers in 1980 for Australian Ballet and has streamlined in into a two-act version for its European premiere in Antwerp. It's a tonque-in-cheek look at the adventures of that famous trio of seventeenth-century 007s who battle against devious schemes to disgrace their beloved queen. In the nineteenth century Alexandre Dumas's famous novel was a bestseller that kept all Europe breathless with suspense, but Prokovsky has bartered the frisson for laughter and the vast historical canvas for some amusing vignettes. Fencing takes on a silent-movie look, and we see our heroes off on their perilous mission in a tiny toy sailing ship. These days, when most choreographers in Belgium prefer to dwell on the darker side of life, it's a relief to be able to laugh, whether or not it's considered politically correct in dance circles. Choreographically, The Three Musketeers follows the traditional storytelling ballet structure, but it seems petty to lament the lack of pure inventiveness when everyone else, onstage and off, is having so much fun.

Alexandre Vassiliev has devised a decor that is historically accurate and attractively uncluttered. The backdrops, whether of five architectural stone arches in the first scene or an Italian garden with topiary boxwood hedges in the second, are evocative of the period. Guy Woolfenden, the music director of Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company, has composed a very effective score using forgotten ballet music from Verdi's operas together with some lesser-known arias.

The dancing is a joy. In this compact company everyone is a soloist, and the cast I saw was right on target--lively, humorous, technically proficient. Nadia Dimitrova was the lovelorn Queen Anne Xiomara Reyes her faithful Constance, and Aysem Sunal the malevolent Milady. Giuseppe Nocera, Rinat Imaev, and Rafael Darder were quite dashing as the musketeers, but the real revelation this year has been the company's latest acquisition, the Cuban guest artist Joan Boada, in the role of d'Artagnan, a Martine fiery, youthful virtuoso with an attractive personality and an amazing technique.