TV DANCE REVIEW : PBS Gives ‘Serenade’ Another Twirl : Dance: The photographic effects that focused on atmosphere instead of dancing are mostly avoided this time.

Fifteen years ago, PBS telecast a New York City Ballet performance of “Serenade,” part of a German co-production that left George Balanchine so discouraged about ballet on television that he grew unapproachable on the subject.

Eventually, the producers of the new “Dance in America” series persuaded him to collaborate in the shooting of his works, a project that extended through 1983, the year of his death. Many of those programs set a standard for dance on television--a standard not always met by a new PBS version of “Serenade” tonight at 9:30 p.m. on KPBS Channel 15.

Distinguished by Darci Kistler’s sumptuous execution of the central role--with Kyra Nichols and Maria Calegari well cast, respectively, in the principal allegro and dramatic challenges--this brightly lit, blue-on-blue performance manages to avoid the photographic effects that made the German version such a disastrous triumph of atmosphere over dancing.

However, producer-directors Judy Kinberg and Thomas Grimm continually indulge in the brief, unmusical, disorienting switches between cameras that Balanchine criticized in an early interview about dance on television: “Nervous camera business is going on all the time . . . with the result that the essential ballet quality soon gets lost. . . .

“Instead of giving you the chance to be absorbed into the flowing continuity of the dance line, they offer you flashes of photography, which may be visually very interesting, but--as I say--they’re not ballet.”

Although it arrives with freeze-frames at the end of every section, “Western Symphony” (the companion work on the hour-long program) suffers less--indeed, has enough virtuosity and comic effects to absorb the Kinberg-Grimm camera-work painlessly.

Set to Hershy Kay’s arrangement of folk songs, this 1954 cowboy divertissement combines regional mannerisms with classical steps. much as Petipa did with Spanish and Hungarian sources in “Don Quixote” and “Raymonda.”

Though Stephanie Saland achieves just the right parodistic edge in the adagio, her partner, Robert LaFosse, wildly overplays the gosh-and-gee quotient. It’s Peter Boal, however, who steals the telecast by flying through the twisting bravura of the finale.

Hugo Fiorato conducts both works and company director Peter Martins supplies brief introductions.