Once more, with panache - American Ballet Theatre comes back after decline

AMERICAN Ballet Theatre is back!

Theoretically, to be sure, it was never away. It continued to put on seasons each year in Washington, D.C., and New York City, and on tour across the country. But something was slipping away during the decade when Mikhail Baryshnikov was artistic director, and that something is now fully back in place in Kevin McKenzie's third year at the helm.

Mr. Baryshnikov's installation as artistic director in 1980 was widely heralded, but intensely controversial. On the personal level, pushing Lucia Chase out after 35 years was a bit like sending the Queen Mother into exile. On the artistic level -- of rather larger long-term significance for the company -- it's a truism that the very greatest performers seldom make good company managers. Whether it's because they're too impatient with lesser talents, or too accustomed to seeing the stage through the eyes of their specialty, they seldom do as well as people who weren't superstars in their active performing careers -- people like Miss Chase (by contemporary accounts, a very witty dancer in comic pieces such as Agnes de Mille's "Three Virgins and a Devil"), Ninette de Valois (founder of the Royal Ballet, who had been a fine dancer but never a prima ballerina), or Kevin McKenzie himself (an excellent partner, with an elegant line, but not to be compared technically with sometime colleagues such as Rudolf Nureyev, Fernando Bujones, or Baryshnikov).

Truisms aren't always true, but this one was in Baryshnikov's case. Granted, he couldn't be blamed for anno Domini; and one of the things that made his tenure difficult was the aging and eventual retirement of several of the constellation of stars Miss Chase and Oliver Smith had assembled -- Cynthia Gregory, Nataliya Makarova, Baryshnikov himself -- and the rather less gradual self-destruction of Gelsey Kirkland and Patrick Bissell. Others (most dramatically, Bujones) broke with the company when at the height of their powers. There were some countervailing acquisitions (notably Alessandra Ferri and Gil Boggs), but much of the excitement was gone.

The programming suffered, too. This is subjective, to be sure. Many balletgoers share ABT's fascination with Twyla Tharp, which in any case neither began nor ended with Mr. Baryshnikov. And in the good old Lucia Chase days, one could get tired of the regularity with which "Pillar of Fire" and "The River" turned up on mixed programs -- especially as Sallie Wilson's balances got wobblier and wobblier.

But the mixed programs under Mr. Baryshnikov were increasingly less mixed -- three little pieces, equally themeless, each of which gave a dozen or two dancers a chance to make different patterns across the stage to sprightly or portentous music. The full-length ballets were often good, but since they depend so much more on their leading dancers, they started to deliquesce with the various departures, and the corps -- which had started to look something like the Royal's or the Paris Opera's under Miss Makarova's coaching for La Bayadcre -- was losing its esprit.

Rome isn't rebuilt in a day, and some evenings at ABT still sparkle less brightly than others (as they always have done). But things have steadily been looking up. Nina Ananiashvili brought her long legs and marvelous balances to the company in 1993, to the immediate benefit of Swan Lake. Last year's repertory included a revival of Antony Tudor's "Echoing of Trumpets," far from a pleasant ballet (it represents the aftermath of a Lidice-like massacre, unhappily relevant in these days of Bosnia), but then Tudor's not-always-pleasant ballets are an integral part of Ballet Theatre's history, and the use of movement in this one is quite brilliant. Also featured was the premicre of "Cruel World," by a young Canadian choreographer, James Kudelka. I had to miss it last year, but friends whose taste I trust found it an enjoyable series of twists on the partnering conventions, and feminists hated it, and so I'm glad it is being done again this year.

The second night of this season was a perfect example of how mixed programs ought to work. The evening started with Les Sylphides, the quintessential white ballet, soft tulle and early Chopin with a few bravura bursts. Marianna Tcherkassky, who has been with the company through all the changes of regime, has lost a bit of ballon but none of her style; Ashley Tuttle was precise and elegant as the other female lead; and of Vladimir Malakhov, more in a moment.

Next on the program was Lar Lubovitch's "A Brahms Symphony," also to Romantic music, but the resemblance stops with the period of the composers. This music is big and urgent, not playful or reflective; the dancers are costumed in vivid colors; and the mode is neither classical nor romantic ballet, but modern dance. This was the New York premicre of this version, in which Mr. Lubovich used Brahms's fourth movement, omitted from his original version for his own company. Ballet dancers never look quite the same in modern as dancers brought up in that idiom, but they can bring their own flair to it. I particularly liked the curve of the arms in some of the fast turns.