Lovelyland

American Ballet Theatre plays it safe in Boston

by Marcia B. Siegel

Everything was beautiful at the ballet last weekend when American Ballet Theatre visited the Wang Center as part of the BankBoston Celebrity Series. Beautiful and bland. ABT has preserved a varied repertory over the past five decades and even caused a large cache of new works to be created. But in common with Boston Ballet and other big classical institutions, it has been programming the softest, safest items for public consumption in recent seasons. The economics of big ballet require conservative business tactics, and the companies would say they're responding to public taste, putting on what will sell the most tickets. In doing this, however, they may also be cultivating a taste for more soft, safe ballet.

The most interesting and modern work presented at the Wang was Jerome Robbins's first ballet, Fancy Free (1944). In other words, Fancy Free was modern in its time, but it's a period piece now, and forget about whatever may have happened to ballet, or to us, in the meantime. Two of the other selections, Clark Tippett's Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 and the balcony scene from Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, were actually choreographed in the 1980s. But in style and content they look back to the 19th century, from which two iconic examples were also on display, the act-three (Black Swan) pas de deux from Swan Lake and the pirate-and-the-slave-girl pas de deux from Le Corsaire.

I'm not sure why Tippett's ballet is a repertory staple. Featuring four principal couples and eight subordinate couples, it's a formal, not very adventurous look at the art of partnering. Each principal couple (Van Chen and Marcello Gomes, Paloma Herrera and Maxim Belotserkovsky, Julie Kent and Robert Hill, and Ashley Tuttle and Joaquin De Luz) has a slightly different character, with steps to match. The corps is pastel -- faceless, symmetrical, and nearly always arranged in pairs and in unison to frame the principals or create a backdrop for them when they're not there.

The ballet opens with Van Chen high in the air, carried on in a graceful lift by Gomes. It seemed to me nothing much changed after that. I mean the dancers appeared chronically airborne or jet propelled, either hoisted by someone else or lofting past in huge jumps. Ashley Tuttle did a brief solo that showed off her clean, fast footwork, but that was the only real allegro work in the ballet.

Love, or sublimated love, is the subject of Bruch Violin Concerto, and it was the subject of everything else on the program. Amanda McKerrow tried to look cruel and seductive as the Black Swan, and Ethan Stiefel seemed uncomfortable as the confused prince. Angel Corella, the pirate, expressed his passion for Herrera when she wasn't on the stage, with a galvanic progression of leaps and a spin sequence that speeded up at the end like a figure skater's. Herrera later achieved some visibility with single and double fouettés that finished with a triple pirouette. The Romeo and Juliet, Guillaume Graffin and Julie Kent, looked right but they seemed temperamentally ill-suited. She didn't know what to make of him at first, then swooned as if that's what she thought young girls were supposed to do with their first crush. He couldn't have had an adolescent bone in his body.

Excerpted pas de deux have many attractions for touring companies. They put lots of star dancers on display without requiring the company to bring along the elaborate sets and hordes of dancers needed for the full ballets. Besides these economizing advantages, the 19th century pas de deux are a proving ground for dancers, who must marshal their highest technical abilities -- their most effective acting, stage projection, and partnering synchronicity -- in the shortest amount of time. Zappo, either you stun the audience or it'll summon up dutiful cheers, with no second acts to make amends. On Friday's opening night, only Angel Corella went over the top.

As for Fancy Free, the Robbins/Leonard Bernstein combination made history. Maybe it's too much to expect dancers today to move like sailors and girls out bar-hopping during World War II. Joaquin De Luz, Ethan Stiefel, and John Selya, in raucous pursuit of Sandra Brown and Amanda McKerrow, looked more like contemporary singles. The particular ways Robbins had his characters bond and compete, show off and make passes, belong to another time. Without its original edgy, pre-countercultural wit, Fancy Free becomes generic war romance.