The resurrection of ABT.

NEW YORK CITY -- As American Ballet Theatre heads into its spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, the fifty-seven-year-old troupe is having a renaissance that would have been hard to fathom four and a half years ago, when the young former principal Kevin McKenzie took over. Its budget had been slashed from $16.5 million to $13.5 million, and the workweek for the sixty-eight dancers cut ten weeks to twenty-six. McKenzie, who had big dreams, sobered up fast. "I was like, `We could do this,' `I know how to fix this,' `We'll do this and do this and do this,' "he recalls. He soon discovered that ABT was like "a big ship. You can turn it hard to the left and then two years later you'll feel a little bit of movement."

What a difference four years makes. These days, the good ship ABT and Captain McKenzie find themselves looking at a cloudless horizon. The budget for the current year is $21 million, and the future is brighter: ABT has raised $6 million toward the $10 million it needs to net a $5 million two-to-one matching grant from board chairman Peter Joseph. The Met season features the premiere of the evening-length production of Othello, with choreography by Lar Lubovitch and an original score by Elliot Goldenthal, opening May 23 [See feature, page 42]; and, most exciting for McKenzie and his eighty dancers, this November the company kicks off what it hopes will be an annual City Center season, November 4 to 14. Further swelling ABT's dates in its New York home will be a new season at the new New Jersey Performing Arts Center in nearby Newark, New Jersey, where ABT will present Ben Stevenson's Cinderella, December 23 to 28.

For the dancers, McKenzie says, the expanded local dates are "a huge benefit. This is a company that's based in New York, and we've always been primarily a touring company. These are wonderful dancers, this is what they call home, and yet their presence locally is eight weeks a year. It's an odd situation, being such a major company [and] having such limited exposure in your hometown." The expanded local presence also galvanizes donors, says executive director Michael Kaiser. "You want your donors to know you're around and important."

The City Center season also presents an opportunity to expose New York audiences to the artistic trove that is the ABT canon, and to new work, says McKenzie. "I've always wanted to get into City Center and have a different profile there" than at the Met, he explains. "The Met is a fantastic theater, yet by the sheer size of it, it demands making productions that are very big. And there's a whole area of repertory that is a gold mine -- it's the seed to the identity which started Ballet Theatre."

For the inaugural season, that history will be represented by Clark Tippett's Some Assembly Required and Bruckner Violin Concerto, James Kudelka's Cruel World, Mark Morris's Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes, George Balanchine's Theme and Variations (which premiered at City Center in November 1947), Agnes de Mille's Fall River Legend, Jerome Robbins's Fancy Free, and Antony Tudor's Pillar of Fire.

McKenzie does not see ABT as a museum, and the City Center season -- as well as the company,s long-term prospectus -- includes showcasing work by contemporary choreographers. "There are some that are on the upper echelon, there are others in the middle ground that are still developing, and there are some that are going to be the future ones," the ABT director says. He wants to cultivate long-term relationships with choreographers, as opposed to picking up the phone and saying," Hi, Jerry Robbins, could you do me a ballet? Thanks.' Well, he's probably the wrong example because he belongs to City Ballet, but the equivalent is to pick him up and say, l don,t want a ballet, Jerry, I want a body of work over the next seven years,' and have that type of relationship with many different choreographers, so that no one dominates the repertoire -- in the same way, frankly, in the spirit and heart that Ballet Theatre started." One of these choreographers will be the ABT leader, who is developing a ballet based on the story of Dierdre, "an old Irish legend. It's something I read in school years and years ago, and it always struck me that some day this was going to make a great ballet." McKenzie hopes to have the piece ready for the City Center season.

Performing these existing and new ballets will also help dancers expand their versatility, McKenzie says.

In addition to developing its dancers and choreographers, ABT has started a program at Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem to develop future audiences. "Make a Ballet" is not your usual lecture-demonstration program, McKenzie says. ABT professionals will train students in all aspects of ballet production, including performing, design, and marketing. "The purpose of this is not to create the world's great ballet," says Kaiser, "but to involve students in a very comprehensive way in the creation of a work." Besides teaching widely applicable job skills, the program will give students ownership in ballet, says McKenzie. "Let's face it,", he says, "nobody wakes up when they're twenty-five years old who,s never been exposed to it before and says, `I've got a good idea, let's go to the ballet.' " However, he says, a twenty-five-year-old who remembers working on a ballet in high school will say, "Hey, you know, I stage-managed that, I did that when I was in school, and I'll go to the ballet."

For schoolchildren in Harlem, the program will also help expand their sense of what is possible. As for ABT, its possibilities seem limitless. Asked if the company has any additional news, McKenzie pauses and says, "No, I think it will be a long time before we have our first season on the moon. I can't wait to see how high the guys jump then."