Ballet : A Brief Fling With a Couple of ABT Swans

Remember the fancy, costly, ultra-romantic “Swan Lake” that Mikhail Baryshnikov staged for American Ballet Theatre in 1988? The one with all the masks, and the swans in long tutus who kept disappearing behind pillars? Remember the controversial production that received its much ballyhooed world premiere at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in 1988? Forget it.

Baryshnikov has left ABT in a lake of acrimony, and he has taken his choreographic schemes with him. The company has consigned PierLuigi Samaritani’s bizarre-gothic “Swan Lake” sets to warehouse oblivion.

Nevertheless, those indomitable swans keep drifting and spinning along. Jane Hermann, the current balletic materfamilias, has revived Act II of “Swan Lake,” the much-loved “white act,” as an independent entity. In the process, she has reverted to the quaint, faded storybook decors designed in 1966 by Oliver Smith--who happens to have come back to the company fold as nominal co-director.

The staging, now, as a quarter-century ago, is attributed to David Blair--”after” Ivanov, of course. But Blair died in 1976. Serving as his uncredited alter ego this season is another honorable veteran of Royal Ballet wars, Georgina Parkinson.

Apart from some rather fussy bits of business involving the hunting party, this is a thoroughly predictable re-creation. Informed in style if vaguely somnolent in execution, it certainly pleases its audience. When the curtain rose at Segerstrom Hall Saturday night, the dry-ice mist spilled into the orchestra pit as usual, the rickety old toy swan was pulled across the backdrop on cue, and thousands cheered.

For better or worse, the Blair production serves as a convenient showcase for many a fine-feathered ballerina. Saturday afternoon, Susan Jaffe sketched Odette’s tragic predicament with lyrical purity and delicate authority, unfazed by a vexing mishap with a split toe-shoe. She was elegantly, even eloquently partnered by Ricardo Bustamante as an Albrecht who is asked in this version to do little more than serve as princely porteur.

Saturday night, the heroine’s short--very short--tutu was worn by Cynthia Gregory, who has been exploring this challenge at least since 1967. She projects regal power, expressive intensity and heroic grandeur that few if any of her younger rivals can match.

At 44, she still offers object lessons in clarity of phrasing and consistency of dramatic focus. She capitalizes on telling dramatic details, the most striking of which remains the numbed horror that suddenly transforms her features and her motions when Rothbart draws Odette back into his evil realm.

Gregory deserves a thoughtful new “Swan Lake” built around her unique qualities as dancer and actress. She also deserves a partner of comparable maturity and sensitivity.

On this occasion, as on too many previous ones, ABT sent in a boy to do a man’s job. The boy was Peter Morrison of the corps de ballet. Only 20, he is promising, strong and obviously reverent. He also happens to be tall--that’s the chief qualification for this sort of instant promotion.

He performed ably under pressure. It wasn’t his fault that the partnership with Gregory yielded some odd Oedipal undertones.

The attendant swans and cygnets went through their rituals with a fine fusion of fluidity and precision. One could hardly believe that this was the same tutu team that had all but stumbled last week through the arabesque orgy of “Bayadere.”

Both matinee and evening bills ended with Kenneth MacMillan’s “Concerto,” a polite and pleasant translation of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto. The busy mass maneuvers, which may have seemed dated even when this abstract exercise was new in 1966, lacked ideal suavity and cohesion. The crucial andante was delineated with exquisitely muted passion, however, by Alessandra Ferri and Bustamante. Howard Barr played the piano deftly in the pit, suavely seconded by Emil de Cou and the ever-resilient Pacific Symphony.

Twyla Tharp’s fast and furious “Brief Fling” returned as the middle installment of the matinee program, looking marvelously taut and tense. Cheryl Yeager again dazzled as the quirky highland ballerina, supported this time by a nobly feverish Wes Chapman. (Julio Bocca, we are told, now finds Tharp’s edgy convolutions beneath his dignity.)

Kathleen Moore has inherited Shelley Washington’s devastatingly funky solos. With irresistibly cool, loose-limbed bravado, she has made them her own.

The central slot Saturday evening was devoted to a repetition of Mark Morris’ delirious ensemble piece, “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes,” in a properly delirious performance. Although the choreographer’s tough, nervy, mercurial wit was appreciatively served, the corresponding point of Virgil Thomson’s 13 etudes was blunted by the on-stage pianist, Gladys Celeste.