TV REVIEW : ‘A Tudor Evening’ Tonight on PBS Dance Series

The early ballets of Antony Tudor were created for a stage scarcely 18-feet square--which can make them problematic in an opera house but nearly ideal for television.

Unfortunately, “A Tudor Evening with American Ballet Theatre” proves far from ideal, largely because TV director Thomas Grimm consistently disfigures the choreography with clumsy and intrusive camera work.

This studio-taped, hourlong “Dance in America” telecast airs tonight on PBS (at 9 on Channel 15; at 9:30 on Channel 28; at 10 on Channel 24; also Sunday at 10 p.m. on Channel 50).

Early in Tudor’s “Jardin aux Lilas,” the distraught bride-to-be (Leslie Browne) has a solo. It lasts less than 75 seconds, yet Grimm switches camera position eight times. The result makes no sense whatever as dancing.

In contrast, when Browne danced the same solo five years ago for “American Ballet Theatre in San Francisco” (a program released on Home Vision and sometimes shown on cable), there were no changes of viewpoint; the camera simply followed the dancing and allowed it to speak.

Even when he’s not chopping “Jardin” and “Dark Elegies” into video hash, Grimm is so blind to the movement design of these familiar ‘30s classics that he blunts their compositions and flow of images. That takes the emphasis off Tudor in “A Tudor Evening” and places it on the fine Ballet Theatre principals--most of them seen in these same roles during the company’s recent engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Browne proves less vulnerable in this “Jardin” than in the San Francisco performance, but she understands Tudor’s style and, as always, her partnership with Ricardo Bustamante (the lover) is electric. As the other woman, Martine van Hamel dances capably, but the photos of Tudor himself as the husband-to-be--seen during the documentary portions of the telecast--suggest a much more compelling figure than Michael Owen manages to portray.

Browne, Van Hamel and Owen return for “Dark Elegies,” with Johan Renvall, Kathleen Moore and Danilo Radojevic in the other major roles. They give solid, committed performances and if they looked very far away on the large Costa Mesa stage, the intimacy of television brings them very close indeed. If only TV artists of equal sensitivity had been involved in this project.