WEEKEND REVIEWS : Ballet : New York City Troupe Revisits and Revitalizes Balanchine

Good news. The reports of the death of George Balanchine are somewhat exaggerated.

True, the firebrand of neoclassical ballet has been gone for a decade now. But his creative flame still can flicker, under the right conditions, at the New York City Ballet.

Peter Martins, official guardian of the sacred torch, has inherited a daunting burden--cultural as well as managerial. Many of his efforts have inspired gnashing of collective teeth, weeping from devout Balanchine critics and wailing from devoted Balanchine disciples.

But the dirges may be premature. Friday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the new New York City Ballet presented a trio of golden Balanchine oldies, and, for blissful stretches of time, it looked like the old New York City Ballet.

The best came first, with Kyra Nichols in “Serenade.” Balanchine’s first opus made in America, this epochal ballet was intended back in 1934 as an innocent student exercise. The City Ballet version, which materialized in 1948, has served as a not-so-innocent signature piece ever since.

It has been danced poetically and prosaically over the decades, smoothly and roughly, beautifully and dutifully. Some of the worst performances actually took place with Balanchine standing--probably pacing--in the wings.

On Friday, the assembled spirits were willing, and so were the bodies. The women of the corps exuded lofty radiance, their willowy arms telling poignant tales in virtuosic unison. The four passing protagonists, all remarkably sensitive to the expressive conflicts broadly suggested but never neatly defined by the choreographer, included Maria Calegari, Melinda Roy, Kipling Houston and Philip Neal (the last-named self-confident and a bit self-conscious as he approached this challenge for the first time).

“People think there is a concealed story in the ballet,” the quixotic Balanchine once wrote. “There is not. There are, simply, dancers in motion to a beautiful piece of music.” Don’t you believe it.

One certainly couldn’t believe it when Nichols dominated the stage. She illuminated the inherent pathos and translated Tchaikovsky’s elegant melancholy with the subtlest of means at every muted turn, both literal and figurative.

As the woman the choreographer blithely described as “the forsaken heroine,” Nichols conveyed a sense of tragic resignation even at her seemingly innocent entrance. And it will be impossible to forget the image of yearning she sustained in the procession that leads to the final cadence--her erect body slowly arching backward, her arms gently stretching upward as three men carry her off in a ritual signaling both defeat and triumph.

Balanchine responded to Tchaikovsky’s specific lyricism with infinitely tender emotion. By the contrary token, he responded to Stravinsky’s abstract drama with probing intellect. In “Agon” (1957), it was, of course, the perfect response.

The current revival of this symmetrical 12-part opus for 12 dancers--with music that dabbles in 12-tone techniques--isn’t quite as tough and crisp as one might wish. Balanchine admitted that the “rhythmic invention gives the greatest stimulus” and that a good performance should be “all precise, like a machine, but a machine that thinks.”

We think the machine may have thought a bit too much on Friday. The central dancers--Darci Kistler, Wendy Whelan, Lindsay Fischer and Peter Boal--looked remarkably sleek in their black practice clothes, and they executed their intricate maneuvers with reasonable clarity. They never seemed quite cool enough, however. It was as if they wanted to personalize the impersonal message. Perhaps the machine could use a bit more oil.

The evening ended with “Who Cares?,” an ode to pop and pizazz concocted by Balanchine in 1970. The point of interpretive departure was the sophisticated music of George Gershwin as aligned to the clever words of his brother Ira.

Nichol Hlinka, fleet and fine, impersonated the ballerina susceptible to fascinatin’ rhythm. Monique Meunier leapt up from the corps de ballet and served notice of a major talent as the perky ballerina who pines for her one and only. Lourdes Lopez capitalized on darkly focused sensuality as the ballerina who wants to build a stairway to paradise.

The chief attraction, however, was Nikolaj Hubbe. The vaunted Danish prince found himself cast here, for the first time, as the man Hlinka loves and who, when left alone, loves someone named Liza.

He is a magnificent danseur, intrinsically noble even when he doesn’t want to be. He is serious, conscientious, an undoubted technical wizard. But he’s no Fred Astaire, and he’s no Jacques d’Amboise.

The slick and casual style does not come naturally to him. He makes looking easy look hard.

The partnering glitches on Friday may be attributed to debut nerves. The stiffness may be a matter of stylistic alienation. With repetition, Hubbe may discover that modern Manhattan and ancient Copenhagen aren’t worlds apart after all. Still, the initial encounter was awkward.

Incidental intelligence: The “Clap Yo’ Hands” number, which is supposed to be danced to a piano recording by Gershwin himself, was once again missing. But the Orange County audience clapped its hands deliriously all night long, often in the right places and usually with good reason.

Hugo Fiorato and the City Ballet orchestra followed the dancers--and, where appropriate, led them--with equal elan in all three, vastly dissimilar pieces.