BARYSHNIKOV & BANALITY : LLOYD WEBBER ‘REQUIEM,’ MacMILLAN STYLE

Some people will do anything to be popular. Sir Kenneth MacMillan, for instance, will make a ballet out of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s banal, meretricious, hyper-eclectic, Grammy-winning Requiem. And Mikhail Baryshnikov, our white-Russian knight in excelsis , will dance in it.

Tuesday at Shrine Auditorium, American Ballet Theatre used the new “Requiem” as the centerpiece for its high-priced, whiz-bang, opening-night gala.

Essentially, the program represented a reasonably glamorous, old-fashioned, balletic-vaudeville mishmash.

It opened with the inevitable “Kingdom of the Shades” episode from “La Bayadere” as staged by Natalia Makarova. The petty Petipa rituals were elegantly executed by the statuesque and ultra-musical Martine van Hamel and the surprisingly--pleasingly--flamboyant Kevin McKenzie. Leslie Browne, Deirdre Carberry and, most compelling, Susan Jaffe led the remarkably suave corps of arabesquing ghosts in white tutus.

Circus time brought the “Sleeping Beauty” pas de deux. Cynthia Gregory exuded willowy strength as a rather mature but sovereign Princess Aurora. Patrick Bissell served as a heroic cavalier, but could ignite few sparks in his bravura solos.

The company found a rousing, sometimes even charming, ultimately frantic finale in Balanchine’s “Bourree Fantasque.”

Leslie Browne and the puckish Johan Renvall stressed cuteness, almost to a fault, in the opening divertissement. Their respective physiques, not incidentally, minimized the traditional tall-girl/short-boy contrast gags. Susan Jaffe and Clark Tippet seemed more earthy than dreamy in the Prelude section, but their earthiness was nice. Cheryl Yeager and John Gardner provided muted glitter for the almost-climactic Polonaise.

Alan Barker conducted a solid pick-up orchestra sensitively in all of the above.

The 5,233 customers in the 6,225-seat cavern seemed to love everything. But they loved the recently created yet eminently unmodern “Requiem” loudest.

They loved the sighing, whimpering, jazzing, jumping, thumping, pounding score, with its unacknowledged odes to Benjamin Britten, Carl Orff, Leonard Bernstein, Hector Berlioz, Jesus Christ (as in Superstar), Gabriel Faure, Mantovani and Sammy Schmaltz.

They loved the dramatic abstractions of MacMillan’s scenario--something about love and death, about standing up and lying down, about clutching and releasing, about body clusters and isolated poses, about with-it philosophy and passe cliches, about modern-dance agonies and distorted-ballet ecstasies.

The audience had, no doubt, read the program note that alluded to a young Cambodian boy who was given the choice of killing his sister or giving up his own life.

In 40 vicissitudinous minutes, MacMillan and Lloyd Webber provide stirring political messages, deep mystical experiences, instant religious uplift and slick capital-C Culture--all with molasses stuffing and candy coating.

The choreography, it must be admitted, is clever in its suavely acrobatic way. If anything, it lends a certain cohesiveness to the musical ramblings. One must be grateful here for a modicum of expressive restraint (everything is relative).

MacMillan contents himself with pretty tableaux even when the score invites rumbles and hoe-downs and cast-of-thousands orgies and heart-rending chorus-line flourishes. This version of the Requiem is still chronically mushy in the middle, but, given the source, it could have been worse.

Yolanda Sonnabend has provided a busy intergalactic set with mock-Asian accents, not to mention color-coded, blood-splotched, slightly shredded unitards for the dancers. War is hell.

Tom Skelton has created a deft lighting scheme that celebrates the fade-out as an image of automatic pathos. The dark is light enough.

Baryshnikov brings taut energy and brooding intensity to the charismatic muscle-flexing, brow-beating, groveling and posturing of the central boy. As the sacrificial sister, Alessandra Ferri conveys the eloquence of softness masking strength.

Three stellar supporting couples--Cynthia Harvey and Ross Stretton, Susan Jaffe and Kevin McKenzie, Leslie Browne and Clark Tippet--stretch and collapse and contort with stylized finesse, even with abiding conviction.

The vocal soloists, positioned stage right, include Cyndia Seiden (a.k.a. Seidentop), a soprano who impresses with effortless, high, limpid tone; Joseph Ravenell, a boy-soprano who sings with remarkable purity and poise; and Denes Striny, a rather tight-sounding lyric tenor who can hardly efface memories of Placido Domingo.

The inherent bombast is minimized, to a degree, in the crowded pit. Jack Everly presides appreciatively over a small orchestra and a small contingent from the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The prescribed chorus of boy-sopranos, incidentally, has been eliminated.

The push-button piety has not.