DANCE REVIEW : 3 Performances by ABT at Center in Costa Mesa

Alessandra Ferri has been with American Ballet Theatre five years now, lending her spectacular lyric/dramatic gifts to the repertory while gaining technical authority in tutu-and-tiara roles.

However, the big suprise over the weekend at the Orange County Performing Arts Center wasn’t this Milanese ballerina’s gorgeously modulated performance in “La Bayadere” (Kingdom of the Shades) but her idiomatic dancing of works by Clark Tippet and Twyla Tharp that required a distinctively American energy and attack.

An Americanized Alessandra Ferri? Absolutely. Without forfeiting anything that made her a major artist, suddenly Ferri belonged to an entirely new frame of reference. Whether stretching and sauntering through Tippet’s new Robbins-esque duet “Some Assembly Required” on Friday--securely partnered by Ethan Brown--or exuding chilly glamour in the Elaine Kudo role of Tharp’s familiar “In the Upper Room” the same night and the following afternoon, she always danced from deep within the ballet’s ethos.

Being eloquent in a new language is always difficult, but, somehow, speaking without an accent seems even more miraculous. Ferri managed to do both, bringing a sense of intimacy and nuance to Tippet’s choreography and making every entrance an event in Tharp’s. Finally, of course, there was that sumptuous “Bayadere” of hers on Saturday afternoon: less than ideally smooth, perhaps, in the pas de deux sequences opposite Danilo Radojevic (efficient if uncharacteristically subdued in his solos), but otherwise memorable.

Beyond Ferri’s achievements, the weekend yielded earnest performances of two challenging dramatic ballets: Antony Tudor’s great “Dark Elegies” (Friday) and Agnes de Mille’s problematic “The Informer” (Saturday afternoon). Each depicted a communal action: coming to terms with grief in Tudor’s 1937 ritual, maintaining solidarity during a time of political crisis in De Mille’s 1988 narrative.

Set to Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder,” the Tudor masterwork had the benefit of strong musicianship: refined playing by the Pacific Symphony under Charles Barker and artful singing by Paul Rowe. In comparison, the dancing looked underscaled--clear, correct but with minimal impact. Yes, Tudor did use a single, upreaching arm as a motif, but shouldn’t it appear more than just a formal structural device? What’s it reaching for ?

Martine van Hamel had every spasm of anguish in place, both Johan Renvall and Radojevic seemed paragons of noble suffering, yet only Kathleen Moore and Leslie Browne (in the duet with Michael Owen) found much urgency in their mourning.

Sketchy in its dramaturgy and ultimately unconvincing, “The Informer” boasted meticulous spatial and movement design: sections in which De Mille deployed contrasting groups and also soloists set apart from both those groups and one another, each unit assigned a different vocabulary. Confusing? Never: Using arrangements of Celtic songs, De Mille gave the whole stage a powerful, unifying rhythm while suggesting the components of a complex society under siege.

Neither Ethan Brown (the veteran) nor John Gardner (the fighter) have grown into their roles; they remain flat and predictable except for their intriguing final confrontation. However, Amy Rose has fashioned a touching interpretation of the woman who brings on the death of both men--and, apart from a few forced conventions-of-anguish (including the silent screams), she gave a compelling performance.

On Friday and Saturday, Ballet Theatre also danced repeats of “Birthday Offering” and “Brief Fling” (both with previously reviewed principals)--plus two casts of “Theme and Variations,” George Balanchine’s 1947 homage to the Imperial Russian ballet. Neither exactly set a standard for brilliance.

The women’s corps looked ragged and, on Friday, supervirtuoso Julio Bocca fumbled the turning steps of both his solos, barely avoiding disaster in the second. He partnered Cheryl Yeager proficiently, but they never reached their “Brief Fling” level of command and rapport.

On Saturday night, Guillaume Graffin made an aristocratic cavalier to Amanda McKerrow’s very pure prima, and the pas de deux looked far less like an obstacle course. But more ease in his solos and more majesty in hers would have been welcome.

Both times, conductor Jack Everly (exemplary in “The Informer”) presided over catastrophic playing of the Tchaikovsky score. Taped music would have been better than this. Silence would have been better than this. Hell, scratchy lambada records played at the wrong speed and turned up beyond the threshold of pain would have been better than this.