Rough and Ready

One of the strangest spectacles in American dance over the past decade has been the dynamic growth of regional ballet companies (bigger budgets, longer seasons, more international stars in residence) in sync with the drastic downgrading of the New York-based A-list.

While entities such as the Boston and San Francisco ballets now enjoy national stature, major financial crises have taken their toll on the Joffrey Ballet (now relocated to Chicago), Dance Theatre of Harlem (which just settled a bitter strike) and American Ballet Theatre.

Opening a weeklong season at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, Ballet Theatre danced a four-part Americana program with no greater distinction than you’d expect from the resident troupes toiling in Ohio or Oklahoma. Not bad, not unprofessional, you understand, just ordinary.

For instance, its performance of Jerome Robbins’ “Fancy Free” (1944) couldn’t compare to Dance Theatre of Harlem’s past achievement in the same masterwork, while its authority in Agnes de Mille’s joyous “Rodeo” (1942) never approached what the best Joffrey casts offered back when that company, too, was a major player.

Both Robbins and De Mille used vernacular gesture to Americanize the classical vocabulary and make it utterly right for sailors on leave or cowboys in the corral. Few members of the Ballet Theatre casts could convincingly embody this stylistic mix on Tuesday--possibly because these dancers specialize in 19th century classics and do far fewer character ballets than their Harlem or Joffrey counterparts.

In “Fancy Free,” you could also make excuses because nearly everyone was dancing the ballet for the first time. Still, the fighting never looked like fighting, the wooing never looked like wooing and the technically impressive sailors (Angel Corella, John Gardner and Ethan Brown) all played character-shtick instead of character. Leonard Bernstein’s score retained its freshness, but the Oliver Smith decor looked worn and faded.

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In “Rodeo,” however, Smith’s rich backdrops proved better preserved than the ballet itself. For starters, De Mille’s Wild West body language seemed flimsy and pasted on here--never coming from the same deep impulse to move that produced the classical steps, never reaching the scale or vibrancy of Aaron Copland’s great score.

Only Griff Braun as the tap-dancing Champion Roper fully met expectations--indeed, exceeded them. Elizabeth Ferrell worked hard as the Cowgirl, but her alternation between bravado and tears just didn’t add up.

Two unusual duets Tuesday emphasized contemporary irony and allowed the women to get out of the character shoes they wear in the De Mille/Robbins rep and into pointe slippers. Set to chamber music by William Bolcom, the uneven but often compelling “Some Assembly Required” (1989) confirmed the choreographic promise of Clark Tippet, a company principal who died five years ago.

Tracing the tensions and eventual reconciliation of a young couple, it adroitly blended emotional values and showpiece technique--though there were moments when the lyrical Sandra Brown, in her pale floral sundress, and the intense John Gardner, in his undershirt and jeans, suggested nothing so much as a forced marriage between Laura Ashley and Calvin Klein.

Eliot Feld’s “Variations on ‘America’ ” (1977) enlisted music by Charles Ives and William Schuman for a mock-classical pas de deux full of good-natured pseudo-patriotic gesture a la Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes.” Call it an antidote to Bicentennial overkill, originally created to give Mikhail Baryshnikov an all-American vehicle.

Both Martha Butler and Keith Roberts were new to the ballet on Tuesday and, for all their spirit and prowess, couldn’t give the performance the status of a Baryshnikov event. But at least all the jokes hit their mark, which was more than you could say for “Fancy Free” or “Rodeo.”

Jack Everly conducted the Pacific Symphony skillfully in “Fancy Free,” “Rodeo” and “Variations on ‘America,’ ” though passages of rough playing left room for improvement. Violinist Ron Oakland and pianist Howard Barr expertly dispatched the score for “Some Assembly Required.”

* American Ballet Theatre repeats this program tonight at 8, then performs a new staging of “Coppelia” four times through Sunday afternoon in the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, $18-$59. (714) 740-7878.