BALLET REVIEW : Ferri Dances 1st ‘Swan Lake’ With ABT

Every actor wants to play Hamlet. Every ballerina wants to dance “Swan Lake.” Some shouldn’t.

Sunday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Alessandra Ferri ventured the dual challenge of Odette and Odile for the first time in her illustrious career. As the central force in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s splendid new production for American Ballet Theatre, she fought desperately and bravely against the strictures of type casting.

It was not, alas, a winning battle.

Ferri is a fascinating dancing actress. She invariably illuminates the character at hand with flashes of personal temperament and all manner of expressive detail. Anyone who has seen her feverish Juliet, her impetuous Clara or her tragically vulnerable Giselle knows what she can do.

Nature has not endowed her, however, with the resources one normally associates with the innocent swan queen and her evil impersonator. Ferri’s stature is a bit too small, and her limbs are a bit too short for ideal images in the classical choreography of Petipa, Ivanov and Baryshnikov.

Complicating the problem further, she is not the sort of technician who dazzles audiences with force, stamina and bravura. She is gentle, thoughtful, intrinsically fragile.

She is too intelligent an artist to give an uninteresting performance even under difficult conditions. On this occasion, one had to admire her expressive intensity, especially as the wounded Odette. One had to applaud her commitment, her nervous energy and her fortitude.

Nevertheless, these obvious virtues could not obliterate such disadvantages as effortful phrasing, muted glitter and an oddly protracted line. Under the circumstances, PierLuigi Samaritani’s long Romantic tutu, with its feathery tail extension, hardly proved an asset.

Guillaume Graffin partnered Ferri most sympathetically as an exceptionally ardent and aristocratic Siegfried. Although he may not be the sort of danseur who inspires instant gasps in bravura flights, he compensates with style, security and dramatic commitment.

Otherwise, the big news of the performance involved that great white blob in Act II. When the production opened on Friday, the blob rose, presumably in the guise of the moon, from the depths of the water in the ruined chapel that somehow houses the swans. By Saturday night it had been relegated to the great outdoors, behind the walls. On Sunday it disappeared altogether, and not a moment too soon.

Four “Swan Lake” performances in three days revealed some other telling vicissitudes.

In the over-live pit, an orchestra culled from the Pacific Symphony played slow and gingerly Tchaikovsky for Jack Everly on Friday. Charles Barker coaxed remarkable cohesion and a hint of passion from the same band on Saturday afternoon. Everly did the same that evening. By Sunday night, however, the quality of playing had deteriorated alarmingly.

Meanwhile, the activity on the stage gained suavity and finesse with every repetition. The impact of the four-act production is greatly enhanced, not incidentally, by Baryshnikov’s decision to sanction only one intermission.

A major revelation of this “Swan Lake” involves the women of the corps de ballet. They have never danced with such unanimous force, academic care and easy precision at ABT. One assumes that much of the credit can be attributed to the fine Russian hand of Elena Tchernichova.

The secondary roles are luxuriously cast. Rothbart does most of his anonymous flapping of wings beneath a crow’s mask, but he does get to exude some human evil (and expose a properly red beard) in the ball scene. Victor Barbee played the shifty malevolence for all it was worth. On Saturday, he even improvised some subtle, intriguingly slimy byplay with a tiny page and Alexander Minz as a very engaged Wolfgang. At other performances, Michael Owen and Clark Tippet settled for more generalized villainy.

Georgina Parkinson brought her grandest Royal Ballet manners to the duties of the Queen Mother. She even succeeded in making the towering, golden, fairy-tale crown designed by Samaritani look imposing rather than ridiculous.

The constantly shuffled roster of supporting players included three excellent Bennos--the debonair John Gardner, the sprightly Danilo Radojevic and the gallant Ricardo Bustamante. Baryshnikov employed the Prince’s buddy in the non-peasant pas de trois, kept him out of the White Swan pas de deux as usual but offered a flashy sword-dance solo in Act III as compensation.

By resetting the Neapolitan Dance as a competitive duet for flying imps, the choreographer-boss also created rewarding new opportunities for Radojevic, Robert Wallace and Gil Boggs, in various combinations.

The four cygnets--large but lovely cygnets--brought down the house on command (they invariably do, even when not danced as well as here). Three of them--Amy Rose, Anne Adair and Shawn Black--were sometimes promoted to pas-de-trois duty.

Minz, old pro that he is, commanded automatic attention as the old tutor, even when standing still. Kevin O’Day, young pro that he is, commanded automatic attention just by flourishing his cloak as a Master of Ceremonies who has traveled a long way from the world of Twyla Tharp.

This “Swan Lake” will, no doubt, be around for a long time. With certain adjustments, most of them scenic, it should wear well.