WASHINGTON BALLET.

WASHINGTON BALLET JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTS WASHINGTON, D.C. SEPTEMBER 17-19, 1999 BY ALEXANDRA TOMALONIS

Washington Ballet was always a quirky little company. Chamber-sized, classically schooled, and perennially young, its core repertory was a collection of neoclassical works by the late Choo-San Goh. After Goh's death, there were several attempts to find a successor, but none quite worked out, and it seemed time for a fresh start.

Septime Webre, who succeeded founder Mary Day as artistic director this season, has promised to give the company a whole new look, and his take-charge attitude and energy are evident.

The season's opening program, titled "Pushing the Boundaries," was a very mixed bag of works by choreographers Antony Tudor, Nacho Duato, George Balanchine, and Webre himself.

The pas de deux from Tudor's The Leaves Are Fading, beautifully danced by guests Amanda McKerrow and John Gardner (both will appear with the company throughout the season) was a last-minute substitution for Jiri Kylian's Nuages, which was rescheduled for administrative reasons.

In a way, this programming was an advance for the company into the world of brand-name ballet. But the central idea, as expressed in both the publicity for the program and by Webre in his friendly precurtain chat, that Agon is the father of both crossover and/or pop dance, seems misguided. Agon is a far more classical and complex work than its supposed progeny.

The new works don't seem destined for permanent repertory. Duato's Na Floresta was pleasant and bland, the dancers mainly anonymous and lacking character. They danced as one might do in the privacy of one's living room after a few glasses of wine: lots of waving the arms above the head, swooping on crashing chords, and tossing of hair.

Webre's Juanita y Alicia, with McKerrow and Gardner heading the company, had a lively, onstage Latino band that was more interesting to watch than the repetitive, occasionally flashy choreography. It resembled the quick-cut, disjointed action of a television commercial.

Webre seems to favor an assortment of body types in his company rather than a single unified company look. The image of the four very different men at Agon's opening was a jarring one that foreshadowed what was to come. The one bright light was Jeanine Jarvie's clear, shy, yet knowing dancing of the Bransle Gay. The pas de deux, usually a duet of tension and high drama, seemed diminished and ordinary, danced by a rather flaccid man and a small, determined woman with curled-under toes.

It's good for the company dancers that Webre chose to stretch them in a ballet as difficult and adventurous as Agon. It's too bad the boundaries that that ballet unintentionally pushed (among other things, its sleek, stark modern look; and the way it expanded ballet's vocabulary by bending it, instead of importing elements from outside ballet) don't, at present, seem to interest him.