ABT STARTS NEW SEASON WITH EXQUISITE `FAUN,' TENDER `RODEO'

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 20, 2005.

Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Jerome Robbins's exquisite 10-minute duet ``Afternoon of a Faun'' and a revival of Agnes de Mille's exuberant 1942 ``Rodeo'' opened American Ballet Theatre's three-week season last night, offering an auspicious start to the company's fall run in New York.

``We'll just be dancing ourselves silly and having a wonderful time,'' artistic director Kevin McKenzie promised the opening-night audience at Manhattan's City Center.

``Afternoon of a Faun'' was first created in 1953 for the New York City Ballet. Referring back to Nijinsky's famous choreography to the evocative Debussy score, it describes an encounter between a young man and woman in a ballet studio, where the possibility of romance vies with the dancers' natural narcissism.

Jean-Pierre Frohlich, who staged the ballet for its ABT premiere, has given his dancers, Ethan Stiefel and Julie Kent, plenty of space in which to discover their own version of the characters.

Setting the mood from the outset, Stiefel captured the languor and self-involvement of the young man perfectly. Throughout, he performed with a spontaneity Robbins would have loved. Kent, though she has the right delicacy and elegance for the girl, seemed rather too knowing about how she wanted to look.

The piece has one of the most beautiful sets ever designed for a dance -- a bare, luminous room created by Jean Rosenthal from panels of sheer white silk. It was appropriate that, on this occasion, the set design and the choreography returned to the stage of the City Center, for which they were first made.

Dancing Cowgirl

Agnes de Mille's ``Rodeo,'' set to Aaron Copland's echt- Americana score, marked the choreographer's centenary. Corny, sentimental, and un-PC as it is, ``Rodeo'' is still disarming in its account of a cowgirl who wants to join the riding, roping guys and is tamed into loving one of them instead. The choreography's daring intrusion of American vernacular movement into the rarefied classical vocabulary still feels fresh.

Faithfully staged by Paul Sutherland, with Cowgirl coaching from Christine Sarry (an unforgettable interpreter of the role), the production has the air of over-careful rehearsing. Further performances will relax and enrich it, making it look weathered by prairie sun and dust. Already the relationships among the characters are precise and tender. And Erica Cornejo makes a perfect Cowgirl, her mix of feistiness and yearning just right, her energy well-nigh incandescent.

`Gong,' `Petipa'

Among the evening's other offerings, Mark Morris's ``Gong'' was by far the most substantial. Set to a gamelan-inflected score by Colin McPhee, it borrows gestures from Indonesian dance. Fifteen dancers move in the intricate, arresting patterns that are the choreographer's trademark. A pair of eerie discontinuous duets performed in silence intensifies an atmosphere where the awkward becomes beautiful.

The familiar pas de deux from Marius Petipa's ``Paquita'' filled the classical-bravura slot, danced by the Russian-trained Maxim Beloserkovsky and Irina Dvorovenko, a husband-and-wife team that's mismatched dance-wise, her diva style overwhelming his poetic quality.

Three excerpts from Kirk Peterson's ``The Howling Cat'' formed the lightest -- and most heartily applauded -- item on the program. This compendium of balleticized Spanish-dance cliches was valiantly performed by Paloma Herrera, Jose Manuel Carreno (who had convinced himself that it was amusing), and a trio of auxiliary men following Jesus Pastor's example of switchblade swiftness.

Tempting Choices

ABT's season is as crammed with temptations to various tastes as a deluxe assortment of chocolates. Four classics will return to the repertory: Antony Tudor's psychological study of grief, ``Dark Elegies,'' George Balanchine's ``Apollo'' (with the birth scene that the choreographer ruthlessly cut from the New York City Ballet production), Kurt Jooss's ever-relevant antiwar ballet, ``The Green Table,'' and Twyla Tharp's apocalyptic ``In the Upper Room.'' The world premiere of Peter Quanz's ``Kaleidoscope'' will provide the novelty both dancers and audiences crave.

© 2005 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.