BALLET REVIEW : ABT’s Brief and Frenzied Fling With Tharp

A year go, Twyla Tharp was a provocative fixture at American Ballet Theatre.

Mikhail Baryshnikov--the matinee idol who ran the company when he wasn’t too busy making movies or acting in plays or dancing elsewhere--had elected the irresistibly iconoclastic choreographer as his “artistic associate.” Going straight, in her finely frenzied fashion, Tharp disbanded her touring ensemble and joined the ABT team.

She took some of her specialized repertory with her, not to mention a few of her own dancers. The collaboration with Baryshnikov & Co. produced some appealingly gutsy work as well as some lavish show-bizzy fizzles. Then came the explosion.

Baryshnikov quit Ballet Theatre in a managerial huff. Tharp’s name disappeared from the managerial roster.

Her future with the company remains clouded. Her present, however, remains dazzling, and pleasantly disturbing.

The latest addition to the Tharp oeuvre, first applauded in San Francisco a week ago and introduced at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Thursday, is a legacy of the Baryshnikov era. It bears what may be a prophetic title: “Brief Fling.”

In this case, the fling refers--or at least pretends to refer--to a charming highland ritual. This is Tharp’s Scottish symphony.

Never mind searching for sylphides. Tharp’s fling is fast and furious, taut and tense. It is refined on the surface yet rough inside. Or is it vice-versa? One is never quite sure, and that adds to the compelling intrigue.

At the outset, the ballet looks reasonably polite. It strikes amusing, even dainty poses. Then it takes off in potentially suicidal flights, often for their own frantic sake. Eventually, Tharp chooses some shocking structural and dynamic detours.

The quaint becomes dangerous. The cheer turns dark.

Michel Colombier provided the loud--too loud--musical impetus for this fusion of strict classicism and feverish adventure. Manipulating the technological miracles of tape and computer, he concocted a sonic tapestry that innocently explores the country gardens and stranded Handels of Percy Grainger, only to succumb to the easy dissonances and portentous rumbles we associate with horror flicks.

The score may suggest candy-coated modernism. The choreography, thank goodness, does not.

It toys brazenly with a tippy-toe tattoo. It showcases a frenzied ballerina in a tartan tutu, partnered by a fearless, airborne cavalier. It adds the casual counterforce of some muscular modernists who happen to specialize in bravura funk. In a bizarre, perfectly coordinated, essentially symmetrical suite of fugues and gigues, flirtations and confusions, the twain eventually meet.

If the clash of impulses is unsettling, its progress is organic and its resolution strangely comforting. Cheryl Yeager, the brilliant ballerina, and Julio Bocca, her firebrand partner, become more interesting as they shed their royal manners. Resident Tharpians--the devastating Shelley Washington, accompanied by Kevin O’Day, Keith Roberts and Jamie Bishton--become even more compelling when they stretch for classical impact.

The supporting corps includes such energetic paragons as Claudia Alfieri, Isabella Padovani, Gil Boggs and Robert Wallace. They sustain the aura of mock-nationalistic unity and bridge the stylistic gap with splendid, overwound bravado.

In this ultracompact 20-minute opus, Tharp redefines conventional rules of partnering. She mocks the traditions she observes. More important, perhaps, she understands the tradition she mocks.

“Brief Fling” bristles with nervous outbursts, yet dares unwind just when one expects a final zonking climax. It shouts its abstract drama. That makes its occasional whisper of lyricism all the more affecting.

Isaac Mizrahi has decorated the piece with a bizarre jumble of parody costumes. Misplaced plaids and tilted tams adorn a generally courtly corps. Some of the men sport formal kilts but no shirts. Baggy slacks coexist with prissy toe shoes. The sartorial worlds collide neatly, tellingly.

One sees obvious texts and complex subtexts here. Tharp has much going on. Too much, perhaps, for one to absorb in a single viewing. The prospect of repetitions--many and frequent--is reassuring.

ABT surrounded the novelty with familiar fare. When, one had to wonder, will Tharp come up with the full-length ballet she owes us.

The evening opened with the ubiquitous “Kingdom of the Shades” episode from “La Bayadere.” Susan Jaffe served as a radiant Nikiya, nobly partnered by Kevin MacKenzie as Solor and unevenly seconded by Leslie Browne, Cynthia Anderson and Christine Dunham as her fluttery attendants.

The 24 ghostlets in white executed their Petipa arabesques rather shakily. The brisk tempos favored by Emil de Cou hardly reinforced the aura of otherworldly languor, but Ron Oakland (uncredited in the program) performed the violin solos exquisitely.

A kind and gentle performance of Agnes de Mille’s “Rodeo” completed the bill. Shawn Black--still ranked a member of the corps de ballet--undertook the central conflicts of the cowgirl for the first time, and did so sweetly if a bit sketchily.

Ethan Brown didn’t strut much stuff in his debut as the head wrangler, and Julie Kent seemed content to be blandly pretty in her first outing as the other woman. John Gardner returned as the sympathetic, soft-grained champion roper. Leading the excellent Pacific Symphony, Jack Everly served Copland heartily in the pit.