The chemistry of movement. (Attitudes).

WHEN I WAS A CHILD--AND I ONCE WAS--MY SCHOOL, AFTER ONE HAD PASSED THROUGH THE HOOPLA AND WHIRLIGIGS OF EARLY YOUTH, WAS DIVIDED LIKE CAESAR'S GAUL INTO THREE PARTS. THERE WAS THE CLASSIC stream (much preferred for scholarship purposes), where the emphasis was on Latin and Greek; the modern stream, where the emphasis was on French, German, and Italian; and, last and very definitely least, the science stream, with physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology, where you were vaguely expected to become doctors, or, if all else failed; psychiatrists. I, of course, with my weird interest in the theater, was headed, with much head-shaking, for psychiatry. "Classic" and "modern"--with my hands stained with acid, my head full of useless calculus, and my dreams disturbed by nightmares of dissecting dogfish--seemed like such calm and educated concepts.

I never became a psychiatrist--thank God and my destructive way not only with dogfish but later, human cadavers--but turned out to be a dance and theater critic. So, of course, quite soon "classic" became a term for cute little girls twirling merrily on their tippy-toes, hiked around by elegant young men, while "modern" suggested barefoot matrons fiercely looking back in angst and kicking up dust over their sweating partners. I exaggerate. But the difference between classic and modern in terms of dance was clear, defined, and immutable. As a dancer you were one or the other. Even as an audience member you tended to prefer one to the exclusion of the other.

East was East, West was West; classic was classic, modern was modern--so let's have no more nonsense about it. But these terms, unlike the disciplines of my schooldays, were anything but calm concepts. They were more like battling tribes. Of course, Martha was polite to Mr. B, and Mr. B was polite to Martha, but beneath such politesse lay a determined code of rightness and wrongness, and both differed only over which was which. Yet through the years the code (or codes) has (or have) subtly changed--and nowadays it is quite a science to know precisely what is classic and what is modern. And to distinguish with certainty among what is modern-classic, classic-modern, modern-modern, classic-classic, post-all-of-the-above, third-stream and midstream, you need an advanced degree.

For example, who ranks among the more distinguished, adventurous choreographers in American classic ballet today? Now I'm not talking about all those various worthy and important, more or less traditional, basic choreographers, from the school of Balanchine and Robbins--the Peter Martinses, the Helgi Tomassons, even the Christopher Wheeldons. I'm talking about choreographers who sometimes work in classic companies but are outside the traditional classic game plan. I'm talking about the prominent likes of Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, Eliot Feld, and Twyla Tharp. Now, forget Feld, for he's basically, by perhaps increasingly reluctant choice, a maverick outsider, whom I admire greatly and will, one column soon, consider separately. What do the other three have in common? Right! They come from modern dance. The twain have met, and "never" has gradually become "sometimes."

I am not suggesting that these three have deserted modern dance for classic ballet--indeed, at the drop of a pirouette, Taylor is apt to express a certain dislike for classic ballet, and his way of working with ballet companies must be unique. But all of them have contributed valuably and--this is important--adventurously to the classic repertoire. Although Tharp is otherwise engaged with her own Broadway musical, she has made sizeable contributions to the repertoires of both American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet, and her work is to be found in other companies--Brief Fling, for example, created for ABT, is now in the repertoire of The Washington Ballet. Morris is solidly ensconced in the very top echelon of modern dance. But success has not eroded his sense of daring, cheek, wonderment, and, on the right occasion, genius. Also Morris, trained partly in classic dance and once a member of the Feld company, has built strong links with the classic establishment, much to its benefit. Next season, for example, Morris's Gong, created for ABT, will be staged by Britain's Royal Ballet and another Morris/ABT creation, Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, goes into the repertoire of the English National Ballet. And last April his delicious Sandpaper Ballet returned to the San Francisco Ballet.

Taylor has also been dipping his bare toe into the world of tutus--not only are many of his works, such as Aureole, widely danced by classic troupes, Company B was premiered by the Houston Ballet, which has another brand-new Taylor scheduled for next season, and Black Tuesday was premiered last year by ABT. Now, Taylor's method of creating for a classic company is unusual in that he mounts it on his own dancers in rehearsal, sends someone to mount the choreography on the classic company, and supervises those final rehearsals. Then the ballet will be taken into his own repertoire. Odd, but it seems to work OK.

It's interesting to see Black Tuesday performed by ABT and the Taylor troupe. Identical (more or less) in choreography and with the same sardonically nostalgic costumes by Santo Loquasto and lighting by Jennifer Tipton, with Taylor's own dancers it emerged perhaps less technically sharp in execution but more carefully etched in character. Whoever dances it--and I'm sure many companies will one day have it in their repertoires--the superbly structured and layered ballet of the Great Depression, set to evocative, mostly poignantly upbeat, Tin Pan Alley songs of the period is a great ballet, one of Taylor's finest achievements.

So there you have it--classic or modern and the science, or at least chemistry, between them. What is happening, it seems, is not simply the third-stream arrival of choreographers, from Glen Tetley to Jiri Kylian, who are neither classic nor modern, but more and more modern choreographers, their style undiluted, contributing, and contributing most adventurously, to the classic repertoire. Good.

Senior Consulting Editor Clive Barnes, who covers dance and theater for the New York Post, has contributed to Dance Magazine since 1956.