‘ON YOUR TOES’: LIMBS TO THE ‘SLAUGHTER’

George Balanchine’s 18-minute jazz ballet “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” is doubly popular this season. Performed alternately by Natalia Makarova and Rebecca Wright, it continues to be the dance highlight of the 1936 Rodgers and Hart musical “On Your Toes” (currently at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion). Danced by Suzanne Farrell, it has also recently appeared on New York City Ballet mixed bills back East for the first time in 14 years.

In context, the ballet represents a story within a story: a dance-drama, supposedly performed by a highfalutin Russian ballet company, about a murderous thug, his unfaithful moll (the Strip Tease Girl) and an amorous hoofer.

Six years before “Oklahoma!” (the musical usually credited with integrating dance and drama), “Slaughter” both advanced the plot of “On Your Toes” and reinforced the theme of reckless passion developed elsewhere in the show through song (“The Heart Is Quicker Than the Eye”) and comedy.

Although arguably no masterpiece, it had character dances as imaginatively grotesque as those in Balanchine’s “Prodigal Son” and “Seven Deadly Sins,” plus slinky duets as laden with a Depression-era sense of hopeless doom as the classic Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” number (from the film “Follow the Fleet”) of the same year. Things must have been tough in ’36.

Balanchine originally created the role of the Strip Tease Girl for Tamara Geva, a glamorous Leningrad-trained dancer who became an international star. Thus it seems ideal for Makarova, the charismatic ex-Kirov and American Ballet Theatre ballerina who dances it in evening performances of “On Your Toes.” But the line of choreographic descent isn’t that direct.

The “Slaughter” that Makarova dances dates back not to 1936 but to 1968, when Balanchine made a completely new version for Farrell--the incisive, unorthodox mistress of many balletic subgenres and perhaps the supreme example of what French critics had once termed le style frigidaire when describing New York City Ballet performances.

Farrell reconceived the Strip Tease Girl in her image--an image that now makes the role highly suitable for Wright, the versatile, musical, unbilled ex-Joffrey principal (and former American Ballet Theatre soloist) who dances it at matinees of “On Your Toes.”

Indeed, Wright proves far more sensitive to the popular dance elements in “Slaughter” and a more expert embodiment of the score’s bluesy insinuations than Makarova. She also appears less hard-pressed by the rapid tempi adopted by conductor Paul Schwartz and even looks comfortable doing classical extensions in heels.

This is a performance of impressive clarity and steadiness, with every mock-burlesque pose and saucy shoulder roll emerging from a sustained choreographic line.

In contrast to Wright’s credible, idiomatic portrayal, Marakova doesn’t really play the Strip Tease Girl as a distinct character or try belonging to the corrupt world of “Slaughter.” Instead she dances the ballet as the same chic, willful prima ballerina that she impersonates elsewhere in “On Your Toes.”

Defensible enough, this approach gives “Slaughter” a playful dimension--the sense of a classical icon toying with pop dancing--and it makes Makarova’s smeared or unsure execution of much of the vernacular movement not merely excusable but endearing.

When Wright flings a garter to her admirers during her strip routine, it’s a classic show-biz tease. When Makarova does it, she might almost be back tossing flowers to her royal mum in the Rose Adagio from “Sleeping Beauty.”

In the second, more fiercely erotic duet, Makarova’s vaunted dramatic powers result in spectacular plunging backbends and an intense focus on her partner that Wright’s smoother but cooler performance lacks. And when Makarova hangs from the hoofer’s arms, limp-limbed in death, what balletomane does not recall her poignant Juliet with American Ballet Theatre?

If the Strip Tease Girl can be successfully danced as both all-American jazz baby and slumming Russian glamour queen, the tap-dancing hoofer seems to require the young Ray Bolger and nobody else.

Certainly no one in the 50 years since Bolger created the role has caused much of a stir in it--not Bobby Van in ‘54, Arthur Mitchell in ‘68, Joseph Duell in the latest City Ballet revival, and not Lara Teeter opposite both Wright and Makarova.

Teeter taps well, partners conscientiously and, especially with Makarova, works hard to make a dramatic effect. (Watch him vehemently take a drink and violently slam the bottle down on the bar. And watch those explosive, gnarled leaps-in-place that begin each repeat of the suicide solo.)

However, the hoofer’s yearning in the duets and the weird mixture of horror and humor needed at the very end of the ballet appear beyond Teeter’s range.

Zack Brown’s gleaming bar set with its sleek wall stripes, mirrored ceiling and tiny stage framed in light bulbs establishes an icy, upscale environment for the action, but his glittery costumes seem to come from another era entirely.

John McLain’s lighting is aptly harsh on the dancers but, interestingly, they seem to cast no shadows and the feeling of the piece is always dark: a ballet noir from its first smoky vista to the final, long-postponed gunshot.