The Joy of Robbins’ Last Ballet

In its deliberately unassuming way, Jerome Robbins’ last ballet is like Shakespeare’s last play and Beethoven’s last symphony: a journey from turbulence to joy, with the spirit of affirmation the key to its appeal. No “Age of Anxiety” this time, and no finger-snapping, streetwise rebellion. Just 20 dancers from New York City Ballet using selections from Bach’s Brandenburg concertos to define a vision of loving, civilized interaction.

Robbins would have celebrated his 80th birthday this week, a few days before the local premiere of his “Brandenburg” on a three-part program at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Seeing this 1997 suite on Wednesday reminded you of his death earlier this year and of his stature within the ballet and musical theater worlds, but also of something more: the ravishing delicacy and meticulous craftsmanship in some of his greatest classical creations.

Bathed in Bach, clothed in pastels, the “Brandenburg” ensemble dancers initially arrange themselves in airy circles, arches and lines or just bob to the music with an easygoing and often playful sweetness, led by Wendy Whelan and Peter Boal. However at the center of the work comes a poetic pas de deux that evokes Balanchine’s high-Romantic “La Sonnambula” and suggests how hard-won all this bliss might be. Here we see Maria Kowroski lost in a dream and pursued by Philip Neal, instinctively avoiding his touch without even seeming to see him.

Her inaccessibility and his unresolved yearning form the last link to the world of human loss and pain before Bach, Robbins and the ensemble return us to the Elysian Fields for a complex, zesty finale. The dream ballet in “West Side Story” (cut in the film version) yearned for a place offering peace and quiet and open air. It’s all here--and then some.

Holly Hynes’ costumes are at once antique and informal, perfectly complementing Robbins’ juxtaposition of perfect order and youthful energy. Jennifer Tipton’s lighting gives that energy a nostalgic glow. Finally, conductor Richard Moredock keeps the dance rhythms insistent--something a little lacking when he presides over the Glazounov accompaniment to Balanchine’s “Raymonda Variations” on the same program.

This familiar 1961 divertissement in Balanchine’s masterly update of Imperial Russian style features a boldly authoritative Pascale van Kipnis and an explosively energetic Alexandra Ansanelli in two of the variations. But the performance belongs to Miranda Weese in the leading role, an icon of refinement with gorgeous placement, a fine jump, sumptuous floating balances and an unfailing lightness. Neal partners her diligently but looks rushed in his solos, apart from some immaculate beaten steps. Other solos go to Carrie Lee Riggins, Jessy Hendrickson and Aura Dixon. Like “Brandenburg,” the ballet evokes a pastoral nirvana: a world without conflict suffused with grace.

In contrast, Peter Martins’ 1988 “Barber Violin Concerto” exploits conflict of several kinds, between individuals and between styles of dance. In this corner, the champions: a pair of lyric ballet dancers, formal and dignified. In that corner, the challengers: two barefoot modern dancers, contorted and sexy. So sexy, in fact, that the ballerina soon literally and emotionally lets down her hair, submitting to rough handling from the modernist male while the two remaining cast members fight it out in a high-speed gymnastic tussle. Very showy, very crude.

When local audiences first saw this quartet in a 1991 PBS special, genuine Paul Taylor modern dancers contended with City Ballet classicists, easily holding their own. By the time the work turned up on a “Stars of...” program in Cerritos three years later, ballet dancers were faking the modernist roles--as they did Wednesday when Ansanelli and Albert Evans inherited the turned-in positions and anarchic energy that Martins adopts as a surrogate for a genuine contemporary movement style.

Simultaneously silly and wonderful, Ansanelli and Evans have it easier than Whelan and Charles Askegard, powerful technicians miscast here as paragons of lyricism and thus forced into a little faking of their own. As she proved in “Agon” on Tuesday, Whelan is fabulously pliant--but she can’t melt as Kyra Nichols could and did in the role four years ago. And that’s the only way to make the ballerina’s defection look like anything other than late-night cruising on the wrong side of the tracks.

Meanwhile, violinist Nicolas Danielson and conductor Maurice Kaplow are providing a persuasive account of the artful score, though with this choreography, the music might as well be Minkus.

* New York City Ballet, Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. This program: tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m. Another program: Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m. $10-$66. (714) 740-7878.