TV REVIEW : ‘Billboards’ Suffers in Abridged Version

The Joffrey Ballet’s four-choreographer Prince extravaganza, “Billboards,” comes to PBS tonight. However, not one word in the “Dance in America” teaser, credits or press kit reveals that this plotless, full-evening 1993 rock ballet has been cut by more than a fourth to bring its running time under an hour.

Gone is the opening ensemble (“Sometimes It Snows in April”) by Laura Dean (other parts of her suite remain), along with Charles Moulton’s “Thunder” segment, which boasts the only new music that Prince composed for the ballet. Gone, too: a reprise in the final, Peter Pucci section.

Taped in August at the SUNY Performing Arts Center in Purchase, N.Y., this is also a “Billboards” without billboards: The scenic units that give the ballet its title are missing except during the curtain-call footage. Joffrey sources explain that the billboards were used during the one live performance taped for the telecast--but not in the rest of the weeklong shoot that took place on the same stage, without an audience.

But if much of the telecast was shot without an audience, what are all the oohs and ahhs and bursts of applause we constantly hear? Special effects?

Director Derek Bailey likes moving his camera every few seconds, but hasn’t a clue how to capture the emphasis on repetition and formal group patterns in Dean’s choreography. Indeed, from the incoherence of the result, you’d guess he’d never seen her work before he shot it.

When, however, solos or duets dominate the stage, Bailey knows where to point his lens--so throughout the Margo Sappington sequence, Tom Mossbrucker gets close-ups that Garbo might have envied.

The Joffrey dancers remain spirited and accomplished, but so many wrong choreographers were chosen for the project that this isn’t exactly the company’s finest hour.

For those who like “Billboards” and want to see it complete, the same performance is available without cuts on Warner-Reprise home video. And the Joffrey will be performing it during an engagement at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, June 28-July 3.