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

The program finished with Gaite Parisienne and its roues, poules de luxe, and can-can dancers somewhere in Montmartre. You wouldn't want a whole meal of spun sugar, but a bit goes nicely for dessert.

Back to Vladimir Malakhov. What ABT most sorely lacked during the Baryshnikov regime was brilliant male dancing in the leading roles. You had some excellent partners (Bissell, McKenzie), and some brilliant dancers in caractcre roles (Danilo Radojevic, Johan Renvall, Gil Boggs), but, with dwindling exceptions, not the two together. Malakhov, new to ABT this year, was born in Ukraine and trained at the Bolshoi school, but he chose to go on to the Moscow Classical Ballet, where he could dance leading roles right away, instead of going to the Bolshoi, where he would have spent years working up from the corps. Tall, handsome, and elegant of line, he gave a reading of Albrecht in Giselle that ranks with the finest. There are many ways to play Albrecht in the first act. Is he a man in love with two women (as Ivan Nagy used to play him), or a bit of a cad (middle-period Nureyev), or merely a young man out for a bit of romance before he enters into an arranged marriage (Erik Bruhn)? Malakhov opts for the third choice. At the end of Act I, he is haughty rather than shattered. That will come later, after Giselle has saved him from the implacable Wilis. And in the meantime, we have seen some dancing -- cabrioles skimming along the diagonal of the stage, grands jetes that hang in the air -- worthy of his great predecessors.

Even more surprising was Jeremy Collins, who has been a principal dancer with ABT for three years and how on earth have I missed him? Also tall, elegant, and handsome, he made the warrior Solor in La Bayadcre as sympathetic as one can. (Radames in Aida, confronted with the same problem -- he loves slave girl; princess loves him; princess's papa insists on a royal wedding -- shows rather more gumption.) Collins also, in the Kingdom of the Shades scene, did a series of doubles assembles to make the heart soar.

Bravi, Collins and Malakhov -- and bravo, McKenzie, for restoring ABT's panache.

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