BALLERINA, POP DIVA TEAM UP FOR BENEFIT : GREGORY, RONSTADT AT PAVILION

With Linda Ronstadt powerfully warbling “When You Wish Upon a Star” while Cynthia Gregory whirled forcefully across a star-spangled stage, the American Diabetes Assn. benefit reached an apogee of collaborative glamour Monday in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

But beyond showcasing Ronstadt’s pipes and Gregory’s pointes--beyond even its mission as a gala fund-raising event--the evening may have had another major purpose or agenda.

A part of Gregory’s 20th Anniversary Tour, the program celebrated her long if periodically stormy relationship with American Ballet Theatre, a company currently appearing in Los Angeles--but without Gregory on the roster.

The irony was delicious: Right after eight Gregoryless performances of the grandiose new “Sleeping Beauty” by Ballet Theatre, the 40-year-old ballerina danced the Rose Adagio on a bare stage Monday with enough technical strength and purity of style to outclass the junior principals who ventured Aurora here with her home company.

More significantly, perhaps, Gregory reminded us that America could produce first-rate classical dancers long before the defecting Russians began to reshape U.S. and European ballet in their image.

Her programming choices also appeared deeply purposeful, displaying her and a number of talented young dancers not only in the familiar Petipa showpieces but in well-crafted contemporary works by her former colleagues Dennis Nahat and Michael Smuin.

As Gregory has pointed out in published remarks, this sense of creative continuity--dancers who choreograph for the next generation of dancers--nurtures talent, and it is truer to Ballet Theatre traditions than that company’s current practice of buying much of its repertory from outside sources.

Besides the Rose Adagio and Smuin’s pop suite “For Sentimental Reasons”--in which she was accompanied by Ronstadt and partnered (until the final solo) by the tall, accomplished Russell Murphy--Gregory danced the Black Swan pas de deux. Alas, neither she nor her guest cavalier, New York City Ballet principal Adam Lueders, was up to usual form and there were many lapses of control.

Supplemented by Lueders and, in the Rose Adagio, by Ballet Theatre principal Clark Tippet, Gregory’s eight-member troupe carried the evening expertly.

Hotly stylish in Petipa’s “Don Quixote” pas de deux, cooly magnetic in Nahat’s moody sextet “Reflections,” Pablo Savoie emerged as that rarest of ballet rarities: a born danseur noble . In the same works, Maria Teresa del Real showed growing success at fine-tuning her remarkable technical skills.

Partnered strongly by Murphy, Michelle Lucci coaxed the last whiff of poignancy from Smuin’s sentimental “Bouquet” duet and Marie-Christine Mouis exuded majestic assurance in Violette Verdy’s lyrical “Pas de Deux” opposite the promising Devon Carney.

Although the ensemble sequences of Nahat’s neoclassic “In Concert” looked ragged, the more intimate sections found Deirdre Duffin, Medhi Bahiri, Carney and Real looking far sharper.

In this, the opening ballet on Monday, the statuesque Mouis was awarded a big entrance ovation. Obviously, some people thought she was Gregory--though, of course, they may also have remembered Mouis fondly from the Boston Ballet “Don Quixote” at the Pavilion five years ago. Of course.

Notwithstanding her spectacular sustained high notes in “When You Wish Upon a Star,” Ronstadt’s most artful singing came in the rueful vulnerability of “Little Girl Blue” and the sunny, wholehearted vow of “I’ve Got a Crush on You.” Dressed in a loose, black neo-flapper dress with Clara Bow-style hair to match, she sang the Nelson Riddle arrangements with a breathy-yet-sturdy tone and unerring sensitivity to mood.

Under former Ballet Theatre conductor Alan Barker, a smallish orchestra met the highest standards of versatility and spirit.