Washington Ballet.

Washington Ballet's first-ever London season coincided with President Clinton's visit to Britain for the commemoration of D-Day. British ideas of the company's status were inflated by its tenuous connection with the White House (Chelsea Clinton attends the Washington School of Ballet). Perhaps as a result, the company received a critical drubbing that must have taken it aback.

Reviewers complained of the blandness of performances and programs, which included works by Choo-San Goh, the company's former choreographer in residence, and his recently appointed British successor, Graham Lustig. His Hearts of Light, which premiered in Washington in May, opened the London season--an act of confidence by artistic director Mary Day, who changed the scheduled program to include it.

Lustig started his career as a dancer with Dutch National Ballet, where he became good friends with Goh. In 1980 Lustig returned to Britain to join Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet (now Birmingham Royal Ballet). Although he made two ballets for SWRB, his choreography developed after he stopped dancing in 1990 and left Britain to work with companies in Holland and the United States.

Hearts of Light is a ballet Lustig had long wanted to choreograph to Michael Tippett's Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli. The large orchestra required would be too expensive for most companies that perform to live music. Washington Ballet, however, made extensive use of recorded music--a source of concern to Sadler's Wells audiences.

Lustig understands musical structure but, on the evidence of this piece, he still doesn't know when to let dance and music diverge. Like his earlier ballets, Hearts of Light is relentlessly busy; nine dancers are forever in motion, combining in duets, double duets, trios, and quintets, with solos lasting no more than a few moments. There is one sequence of blessed release, when a solitary man has the Corelli theme all to himself--but then a couple rush in to take it over, swooping and swirling in repeated lifts, the woman's legs splayed like a hyperactive geometry compass.

Arabesques dominate the choreography: every phrase seems to end in one, often with the women supported in plunging penchees, echoing the ecstatic sweep of violin strings. Quick, neat, pique arabesques demonstrate the fugue halfway through the music: two men start off in counterpoint; five women take over in groups of three versus two; then all seven move in canon form, eventually dancing in unison.

The fugue is robbed of its effectiveness by Lustig's over-frequent use of canon and counterpoint throughout the piece (a criticism that can equally well be made of the ballets by Goh and Nils Christe in the same program). Promising ideas are swamped by an excess of detail. The opening statement, a decorous line of dancers with their backs to the audience, reappears briefly at different angles. Just before the end, all nine dancers line up to acknowledge our presence with a courtly reverence; but even then, they won't stay still, breaking away to form yet another grouping before the curtain falls.

The women's costumes, designed by Lustig, are pretty: chiffon skirts in pastel colors, with quilted bodices and long sleeves that leave the tops of the arms bare. Thanks to dim lighting, the dancers are largely indistinguishable--and the three men are best forgotten. Hearts of Light might work better as a closing ballet, after its performers have had a chance to establish themselves in other works; as an introduction to the company, it was anodyne and off-putting.