TV DANCE REVIEW : PBS ON THE RIGHT TRACK WITH ‘STREETCAR’ BALLET

The strong dramatic basis of Valerie Bettis’ one-act ballet “A Streetcar Named Desire” allows it to survive the largely anti-choreographic approach that has come to be standard on the PBS “Dance in America” series over the last few years.

And the strong character-dance emphasis in the training at Dance Theatre of Harlem allows its dancers to remain credible in extreme close-up, even when performing actions intended to register at full-theatrical scale.

Thus the studio-taped Danish TV version of the familiar Harlem “Streetcar” (tonight at 8 on Channel 24; at 9 on Channels 28 and 15) is far more successful than many recent episodes of the once-innovative series. And it emphasizes details in the portrayals by Virginia Johnson (Blanche) and Lowell Smith (Stanley) that even attentive theatergoers can easily miss. (Catch Johnson’s quick, horrified glimpse of herself in a hand mirror.)

Compared to the original Tennessee Williams characters, this may be a less ravaged, more willful Blanche, and an unusually confused Stanley who is partly victimized by events--but Johnson and Smith dance the roles to blazes.

Director Thomas Grimm commits major errors (the street scenes look spatially cramped, the interiors palatial), but he has tried to preserve Bettis’ sense of parallel action, and distinctions between present and past, through subjective camera and editing effects.

Filling out the hourlong telecast are rehearsal and interview footage featuring company artistic director Arthur Mitchell, plus an abridged version of Frederic Franklin’s “Sylvia” pas de deux with Judy Tyrus and Eddie J. Shellman (stiff in style, uneven in technique), and ruinously shot fragments of Geoffrey Holder’s “Bele” with Johnson, Lorraine Graves and Karen Brown among the most prominent celebrants.