ABT'S `KALEIDOSCOPE' SHOWS OFF NEW CHOREOGRAPHER, PETER QUANZ

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 24, 2005.

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Lovers of classical dance complain, rightly, about the dearth of compelling new choreography. American Ballet Theatre just gave them reason to hope.

Last Thursday, on the second night of its three-week season at New York's City Center, the company offered the world premiere of ``Kaleidoscope,'' an astonishingly confident and inventive neoclassical work by a little-known choreographer, 26-year-old Canadian Peter Quanz.

Set to Camille Saint-Saens's delectable Piano Concerto No. 5, the piece doesn't flag once in its 27 minutes. It presents two couples who might live in different worlds --on neighboring country estates, say, given Holly Hynes's pretty pastoral costumes. We meet the two pairs and get to know them sequentially. We see them together only at the ballet's close.

The matrixes in which the couples operate are created by a corps de ballet of a dozen women and a half-dozen men. Quanz maneuvers this ensemble in swiftly shifting patterns that are invariably well-balanced though -- contrary to traditional practice -- asymmetrical. He keeps you eager to see what will happen next, as if you were following a thrilling plot. At the same time he delivers the very essence of classical dancing -- harmony that continually reinvents itself.

Witty Surprises

As each leading pair plays against segments of the ensemble, it suggests a courtship that's headed for ecstasy, yet prone to moments of misunderstanding. The two men, Ethan Stiefel and Maxim Beloserkovsky, are fair and fine-boned, with a delicate air about them. Their ladies, Gillian Murphy and Veronika Part, are generously proportioned women with a commanding presence. So the men appear to be sensitive souls, poets perhaps, amazed and delighted by their good fortune in being accepted as cavaliers to goddesses.

``Kaleidoscope'' contains two witty surprises. The first is a passage in which the corps de ballet gets to dance without any intrusion from the principals, becoming, just for a moment -- and deservedly -- the whole show. The other is the finale, where the two main couples appear together for the first time, backed by the full corps, and the stage picture suddenly becomes symmetrical. It's as if the two pastoral estates had merged and transformed themselves into the magnificent hierarchical court in which ballet was invented.

Dance of Death

Kurt Jooss's antiwar ballet ``The Green Table'' may date to 1932, yet has lost no relevance. Constructed as a series of vignettes that have the vividness of great poster art, it shows corrupt world leaders instigating war while the people suffer. An all-devouring Death (David Hallberg, in the first cast) lays claim to his prey: valiant soldiers who believe in their cause, an impassioned war widow exacting revenge, a young girl forced into prostitution, a frail grandmother, even a profiteer. Each dies differently; all join finally in the macabre chain known from medieval times as the dance of death. Most of the performers need to add more weight and calm to their interpretations, but Marian Butler, as the old woman finally embracing death, is already perfect.

`Apollo'

The best that can be said of the company's production of George Balanchine's ``Apollo'' is that it includes the birth scene (and the original ascent to the heavens) that the choreographer ruthlessly sheered off his 1928 masterpiece late in his career. Otherwise ABT's present rendition undermines both the sublimity of the ballet and its daring originality.

The orchestra, under Charles Barker, gives a lackadaisical account of Stravinsky's score. Similarly, Richard Tanner's staging ignored the dynamics of choreography in which angularity and abruptness brilliantly punctuate both allegro and lyrical dancing. I don't know who instructed the muses to smile as if gently peddling their charms, but someone should tell them to stop.

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