Russian roulette

The Brits do Igor, Peter, and Anton

by Jeffery Gantz

"THE BRITISH ARE COMING," Danses Concertantes, by Michael Corder, and Winter Dreams, by Kenneth MacMillan. Presented by Boston Ballet at the Shubert Theatre through March 12.

When Paul Revere rode out to Lexington to announce that the Brits were coming, Americans took defensive action. Boston Ballet's "British Are Coming" pairing of Michael Corder and Kenneth MacMillan at the Shubert didn't have me hauling out my musket, but I didn't feel like rolling out the red carpet, either.

If the title of Corder's 1993 piece has a familiar ring, that's probably because Igor Stravinsky's 1942 Danses concertantes is also a Balanchine ballet, choreographed in 1944 for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Despite favorable notices from B.H. Haggin and Edwin Denby, Balanchine didn't revive it for New York City Ballet till 1972 -- possibly because he and Stravinsky were at odds over whether it was really dance music. I've never seen Balanchine's Danses Concertantes, but Corder's version has the general look of neo-classical Balanchine, with three couples (mostly-white tutus, mostly-white leotards) fronting four groups of two women and one man (pink tutus, mostly-black leotards) and, at the Shubert, a vaguely Miró-esque backdrop of black chalk markings on pink and blue set off by drooping overhead cords that suggest circus wires. The movement has Balanchine substance without quite the Balanchine style -- and in Balanchine there is no substance without style. The pink ladies, with their showgirl shimmies, and the biker (those black 'do-rags) boyfriends give this 20-minute ballet a subversive edge, but I couldn't find, on one viewing at least, any visual depiction of Stravinsky's internal metric fragmentation, and of the three leading ladies, Pollyana Ribeiro and Adriana Suárez seemed a fraction too perky. Larissa Ponomarenko was her usual polymath self, tender and abrasive, lyrical and abrupt, even throwing out hints of kinky, and Paul Thrussell complemented her with a boyish, ingenuous chivalry in their pavane-like pas de deux. But I still wanted less Hampton Court garden party, more West Side story.

Kenneth MacMillan's hour-long Winter Dreams -- from 1991, the year before his death -- also has a familiar ring: the title is the nickname of Peter Tchaikovsky's moody, mist-shrouded First Symphony. MacMillan's ballet is set not to the symphony, however, but to a mishmash of minor Tchaikovsky compositions (chief among them two Opus 51 pieces, the Valse sentimentale and the Romance) transcribed for piano plus some traditional Russian music arranged for guitar. As if that weren't confusing enough, the ballet retells Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, though if you haven't read the play (or you don't remember it), you'll be hard-pressed to follow the action.

As represented by the Elektra videotape of a 1992 Royal Ballet performance that was televised by the BBC, this is Choreography Laureate: outdoor vistas, birch-tree sunsets, falling snowflakes, dancers whirling by from all angles, a soap-opera story -- call it "Days of Our Chekhov Lives." Except that the sisters bring to mind not Olga, Irina, and Masha so much as Longfellow's "Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,/And Edith with golden hair." I was startled to see how much better Boston Ballet's staging looks. The dinner party takes place behind a barely translucent black velvet curtain that serves as backdrop for the diners' danced-out dreams. Irina is courted by two officers, Solyony and Baron Tusenbach. Masha has fallen for the handsome Vershinin, though there seem to be doubts on both sides (in the play, they're married, but not to each other). The feckless schoolteacher Kulygin is spurned by Masha (in fact, he's her husband, but how would you know?). Solyony and Tusenbach fight a duel over Irina; the soldiers depart, the sisters are stranded.

No production could fill in the blanks in this failed attempt at literal storytelling, but Boston Ballet does elevate MacMillan's work to the level of serious art. Company pianist Freda Locker makes minor Tchaikovsky sound like major Schumann, and the dancers follow her cue, phrasing with point, poignancy, and even wit. Pollyana Ribeiro is a flirty, spontaneous Irina caught between Robert Moore's solicitous Tusenbach and Reagan Messer's lothario-like Solyony (though these two initially seem too much alike). April Ball is a regal, repressed Olga (what a Tatiana she'd make in John Cranko's Onegin, or an Anna Karenina), Paul Thrussell an endearingly awkward Kulygin; and Larissa Ponomarenko and Yury Yanowsky render the pas de deux for Masha and Vershinin the ballet's emotional centerpiece, with agonized extensions and intimate interplay. (Credit MacMillan, whose choreography for twos and threes offers expressive possibilities I didn't see realized in the Royal Ballet video.) And as Dr. Chebutykin, Gianni Di Marco delivers a chair solo worthy of Harold Lloyd or Charlie Chaplin. But for story purposes, he's wasted, and so are Jennifer Glaze (Natasha), Robert Underwood (Andrei), Sydelle Gomberg (Anfisa), and Christina Elida Salerno (the maid). Winter Dreams should have been Chekhov Interpreted; instead it's Chekhov Illustrated.