DANCE : Surprises Popped Up in ABT’s 12-Day Run

American Ballet Theatre concluded a 12-day engagement Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, looking increasingly comfortable and settled in on the Segerstrom Hall stage.

During the exclusive Southern California run, there were the usual number of high and low points, plus a few surprises. Here are some excerpts from a reporter’s notebook:

* Tuesday, March 6: A lackluster performance of Frederick Ashton’s 1956 “Birthday Offering” opens the run, with most of the principals looking stiff and repressed, perhaps in the belief that such restraint is correct British style.

No one in the company seems to grasp the idea that Ashton shaped his solos to fit the personalities of particular dancers, not just on running through a lexicon of different choreographic challenges. These gifted ABT dancers apparently are not encouraged to invest themselves into these roles and fill out the steps with their own personalities. A pity.

Still, the troupe offers a down payment on Twyla Tharp riches to come with a dutiful performance of her popular 1976 ballet, “Push Comes to Shove.”

* Thursday, March 8: Local premiere of Tharp’s new “Brief Fling.”

Expectations run high for the first local sighting of Tharp’s “Brief Fling.” Premiered in San Francisco one week before the Costa Mesa engagement, “Brief Fling” had critics there beaming, amid reports of repeated enthusiastic curtain calls. A second performance of the work in the Bay City had to be canceled, however, because one of the dancers had the flu.

One dancer out sick? And not even the main one, and the work had to be canceled? There were no understudies? People were puzzled.

But once we saw it in Costa Mesa it was clear that every dancer is critical to this intricate masterwork and that the absence of a single person would cause the collapse of the whole. As to why there was no replacement, a spokesman suggests lack of time and rehearsal opportunities.

In this compact, 20-minute work, Tharp continues her decades-long project of deconstructing and reassembling the vocabularies of ballet and modern dance. She proves most dazzling in group fugal passages and most exhilarating in the ensuing Highland fling. Amazingly, she chooses to end the work on a sober, quiet end. There are three curtain calls--or is it four?

Friends and critics rush out afterwards to discuss and compare notes. All agree that one viewing is not enough and make firm plans to return for a second look--plus a chance to see her “In the Upper Room” twice--on the final weekend.

* Friday, March 9: Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca in the title roles of Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet,” the first of eight performances of the ballet:

Are these the same sets and costumes for “Romeo and Juliet” that looked so brown and dreary when seen over recent seasons in the vast open spaces of the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles? Did the company send the costumes to a dry cleaner and scrub the sets?

Yes, they are the same, but lovingly lit on the Segerstrom Hall stage, the production looks deeply, richly colorful and the sets reveal hitherto-unseen perspectives.

But the big news is that Ferri quickly emerges as the star of the run. The first of five Juliets, she turns in a performance of a lifetime.

Singularly beautiful, this 24-year-old Milanese can look exactly right as the Renaissance Capulet daughter; but beyond that, her dancing is consistently informed with warm, intelligent detail and absolutely technical mastery.

Ferri seems to be living the story, not just dancing steps. Amid a plethora of details, one can scarcely forget her duet with Paris: Where other ABT Juliets tend merely to go into an arabesque, Ferri finds the heart of the step, reaching out in yearning and anguish toward her missing Romeo.

Similar detail colors her Nikiya in “La Bayadere” (opposite Danilo Radojevic on the final Saturday afternoon, and Bocca on the final Sunday evening). But she also proves remarkable in Clark Tippet’s modern battle-of-the-sexes duet “Some Assembly Required” (with Ethan Brown on Friday) and especially wonderful in Tharp’s 1986 ballet “In the Upper Room” (final weekend).

Two other dancers prove notable during the run:

Leslie Browne, who had been thrust into the limelight prematurely when she appeared opposite former artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov in the 1977 film, “The Turning Point,” fortunately has continued steadily to grow and deepen as an artist.

As the distraught, tragic Caroline in Antony Tudor’s “Jardin aux Lilas” (opening night and the first Wednesday) and one of the grieving women in Tudor’s “Dark Elegies” (final weekend), Browne turns in compelling interpretations.

Beyond that, Browne seems one of the few ABT principals who understands that there are differences in style from one choreographer to another, from one national ballet school to another. For her, a Tudor arabesque is not a Petipa arabesque is not a MacMillan arabesque. Why isn’t there more coaching along these lines in ABT?

Kevin McKenzie, long a loyal principal dancer, begins to look more than just ol’-reliable Kevin, taking impressing virtuoso risks as Solor in “La Bayadere” opposite the poetic Martine van Hamel on Sunday afternoon.

* Friday, March 16: After the series of “Romeos,” the company returns to mixed-repertory programs, offering George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations” on the final weekend:

Is there any dance company in the world that treats its cultural heirlooms as carelessly as ABT treats Balanchine’s wondrous “Theme and Variations”? Created for ABT in 1947, this homage to Russian classicism has been seen in various incarnations over recent years. Thankfully, the muddy brown and red costumes of a previous production have been replaced with icy-blue ones that fit the sparkling, chiseled neoclassicism of the choreography.

This work challenges everyone, offering the male principal dancer one of the supremely difficult roles in the repertory, and here the company seems to pay only lip service to the requirements. You would expect only their best dancers to be cast in the work. But no.

The corps looks ragged and the demi-soloists prove indistinguishable--other than wearing sashes across their costumes--from the corps. Such wonderful choreographic moments as the wheeling and unwheeling into multiple arabesques along diagonal lines, which match the cresting lines of Tchaikovsky’s glorious score, were smeared by the dancers.

Of the male principals, Bocca has trouble with the grueling turns on Friday, and Jeremy Collins, who is still listed as a soloist, looks in need of an oxygen tank before finishing the ballet on Sunday afternoon.

Fortunately, the final weekend offers two stunning performances of Tharp’s “In the Upper Room,” one of the last works she created for her company before disbanding it and joining ABT as artistic associate in 1988 (a position she subsequently resigned when Baryshnikov resigned as artistic director in June).

Set to music by Philip Glass, “Upper Room” finds Tharp in her most kinetic and apocalyptic mood. While its opening mirror symmetries are easy to follow, the work quickly grows more complex, challenging, beguiling and amazing. When it ends in a whirlwind run-through of all the preceding movements, it is no wonder that the audience goes wild and at least one reporter has to check his heartbeat to make sure that he isn’t going over the edge.

PR HYPE: A press release announcing William Hall leading the Master Chorale of Orange County in Parts II and III of Handel’s “Messiah” in Pasadena on April 7 doesn’t hesitate to trumpet the event as “the definitive Baroque performance.”

Overlooking the dubious claim that a huge chorus of 165 members, as this promises to be, represents the proper size for a Baroque vocal group--Handel probably had 35 in the first performance in Dublin--students of music history might wonder how this performance will beat those the composer himself conducted.

In any case, the event will take place at 8 p.m. at the Lake Avenue Congregational Church. Tickets: $15 for general admission; $7.50 for senior citizens and students. Information: (714) 556-6262.