DANCE REVIEW : American Ballet Theatre Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary

With polite nods to its present and grand gestures to its past, American Ballet Theatre presented a gala performance on Sunday night at the Metropolitan Opera House to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

The one-time-only event--a nearly four-hour sentimental journey of dance snippets--was quickly sold out, and the audience seemed as split in its taste as the elements of the presentation.

Some individuals apparently had come to praise ABT as the thriving entity it now is by way of the artistic directorship of Mikhail Baryshnikov. (Baryshnikov recently resigned in conflict with the company’s present Executive Director, Jane Hermann).

Others seemed to have come to hail an end of Baryshnikov’s era, and to support a return to the kinds of policy that marked the later years of Lucia Chase’s tenure as artistic director.

In general, these separate voices were in separate parts of the house. The supporters of anything easily identified with ABT’s present were in the more expensive downstairs seats; those of the bygone era were in the less pricey reaches of the theater.

Thus when Oliver Smith--former longtime artistic director of the company, alongside Chase, and now artistic adviser to the current organization--made the first mention, from the stage of Michael (sic) Baryshnikov, the downstairs area had a burst of applause, sprinkled with a few disgruntled groans and vestigial boos.

When Gelsey Kirkland, a prodigal daughter of sorts ever since she published her vindictive “tell all” account of her troubled years at ABT, strode on stage looking and sounding like a wide-eyed flower child, the upstairs crowd led the cheers.

As the one-intermission evening went along, specially produced film sequences showed all-too-brief clips of historical company footage and selectively arranged speakers reminisced about bygone ABT days. Progressively, the company’s past, notably its pre-Baryshnikov period, got more and more attention--and applause.

The program’s only bid to the most vital part of a ballet company’s present--its new work for its developing dancers--came in a segment narrated by Twyla Tharp showing her own ABT work. This display included an intriguing, energetic excerpt of “Brief Fling,” a work that is about to have its premiere with the company.

The climax of this half, however, was reserved for the so-called classics of ballet, starting with a 70-or-so year-old Alicia Alonso performing a kind of personal reverie on the White Swan adagio from “Swan Lake.” This excerpt preceded 13 others. They culminated in an effortful performance of the coda from the Black Swan pas de deux by Cynthia Gregory and Fernando Bujones.

The finale of “Theme and Variations,” George Balanchine’s 1946 creation for ABT, closed this segment of the program. A grand finale, showing all the dancers of the company in all the roles of the evening, and then some, capped the whole affair. But not before the guest dancers and company directors joined them on stage for a full cast call.

Altogether this program, conceived and directed by Michael Smuin, included 28 separate dance excerpts, not counting the numerous others shown in the four film sequences. It was a whole slew of dancing but very little dance.

The plan, as the celebration went through its themes honoring Antony Tudor, ballet Americana and modernist experiments, reserved the most extensive dancing for the end. Very few ABT dancers benefited from the protracted wait in the wings. Julio Bocca, in the bravura male solo from “La Bayadere” tore into his role with such over-exuberance that he largely distorted his impassioned dancing.

Only Alessandra Ferri and to a slightly lesser extent Amanda McKerrow took their all-but-stolen moments on stage to perform with unhurried finesse and impressive concentration.

These examples, and that of Tharp’s aptly named “Brief Fling” showed ballet with a vital, immediate glow: small flickers in an otherwise shadowy array of backward thinking. It could just be jubilee activity or perhaps a sign of new conservative policy capitulating to one vocal faction of the ABT audience.