Heritage lost but a legacy preserved

Preserving the creative legacy of Nederlands Dans Theater more successfully than its own artistic heritage, American Ballet Theatre opened a 10-performance engagement at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Thursday.

At the start of the evening came two Nederlands pieces by Jiri Kylian exploring Europe’s obsession with the past. At evening’s end came a pop suite created for Ballet Theatre by four choreographers that exposes American classicism’s current obsession with technique.

In the middle -- the usual spot where artistic directors place heavyweight choreography on programs like this -- languished a feeble revival of a bona fide Ballet Theatre masterpiece, Antony Tudor’s “Pillar of Fire,” a 1942 dance drama long a touchstone of the company’s greatness but now something of an irrelevance.

Yes, you could still find in Donald Mahler’s 2003 staging nearly all the wondrous gestural invention and expressive transformations of ballet technique that put “Pillar” in the history books, as well as nearly all the ways that Tudor transfigured Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night.” But the Thursday principals remained ruinously dutiful and insular, destroying the gathering intensity that should have developed from their contact. Worse, everyone seemed to see the ballet as a period piece, as if oppressive family relationships and a desperate hunger for love don’t exist anymore.

Urgent and true in her small-scaled way, Amanda McKerrow danced the central role with a deep understanding of its facets and challenges but couldn’t hold the ballet together alone. Everyone else in principal roles -- Monique Meunier, Xiomara Reyes, Gennadi Saveliev and Marcelo Gomes -- found one thing to play and stuck to it, glumly.

Reyes, Saveliev and Gomes found more congenial assignments on Thursday in Kylian’s “Petite Mort,” a 1991 ensemble piece that, like the choreographer’s 1986 “Six Dances,” also on the program, featured a number of stiff black 18th century ball gowns that skimmed the stage usually on their own power and without anyone wearing them.

Sometimes briefly used for sight gags, these hollow sculptures symbolized the emptiness and absurd weight of outmoded European traditions. And in “Six Dances” they found their living complement in the antic silliness of bewigged and powdered aristocrats enacting all manner of romances and rivalries in their underwear.

Much of the work satirizes everything Kylian despises in ballet: delirious mime, florid emoting, phony elegance, intrusive technical outbursts (fouettes, no less) and Mickey Mousing every tiny quiver in the score (Mozart both here and in “Petite Mort”). Perhaps some Ballet Theatre cast members suspected that their own repertory might be one target of the satire, but they danced with great verve and precision anyway.

In “Petite Mort,” fencing foils and a silken canopy periodically drawn over the stage embellished the choreography. But at the core of the work, Kylian devised one of his sublime chain duets: a lyric pas de deux that passed from one couple to another as if from heart to heart or generation to generation.

The company cast some of its biggest stars: Paloma Herrera, Jose Manuel Carreno, Irina Dvorovenko and Ethan Stiefel among them. And if some cut the choreography into conventional balletic phrases, breaking the seamless flow of motion that the finest Nederlands dancers sustain, Stiefel and Stella Abrera achieved a magical fluidity in their partnership.

Familiar from performances last season in Costa Mesa, “Within You Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison” (2002) enlisted choreographers David Parsons, Ann Reinking, Natalie Weir and Stanton Welch in an exercise fusing crossover salesmanship with the baldest, most aggressive technical display. On Thursday, the principal excitements included Angel Corella’s bravura turns, Gillian Murphy’s super-stylish pointe work, Herman Cornejo’s spectacular buoyancy, Isaac Stappas’ heroic partnering and Abrera’s amazing pliancy. But only Stiefel, in one phenomenal solo (set by Weir to the title song), danced as if he had really listened to this music by choice and believed that it made a difference in his life. Some tribute.

Conducting responsibilities were shared Thursday by Charles Barker (the Mozart) and David LaMarche (the Schoenberg). A tape track accompanied “Within You, Without You.”

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American Ballet Theatre

Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: Mixed bill: Tuesday and Wednesday, 8 p.m. “Romeo and Juliet”: Today,7 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.; Thursday and Friday, 8 p.m.; April 10, 2 and 8 p.m.

Price: $25-$85

Contact: (213) 365-3500