‘Romeo’ gets party started

Little girls skipped alongside their fathers, men in black tie checked their watches and women carrying beaded opera purses moved with urgency into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“No late seating,” cautioned ushers, as guests found their seats for the April 3 opening of the 2004-05 season of Dance at the Music Center. Ticket holders who had not seen one another since last year exchanged kisses on cheeks, while guest conductor Ormsby Wilkins warmed up the string section. And then the chandeliers dimmed and the curtains rose on the American Ballet Theatre’s production of “Romeo and Juliet,” with a score by Sergei Prokofiev, sets steeped in Byzantine gold and garnet, and a curly-haired Mercutio (Herman Cornejo) whose leaps caused the audience to hold its collective breath and find release in bursts of applause.

“Romeo was no slouch, either,” said one woman on the elevator to the post-performance gala, a Verona-themed party resplendent with garlands and grapes, waiters wearing puffy white blouses (“Are they supposed to be the pirate shirts from ‘Seinfeld’?” asked a guest) and a band that played jive, to which Michael Milken and his wife, Lori -- the evening’s honorary chairs -- shook a leg, although she appeared to take two steps to each of his.

“Dance is here to stay in L.A., and we’re here to make sure that happens,” said Liane Weintraub, founding chair of the Center Dance Assn. of the Music Center, who could be mistaken for the model for Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” if Venus were 6 feet tall, seven months pregnant and swathed in a clingy Eduardo Lucero gown. She accepted a congratulatory kiss from Lewis Ranieri, chairman of the American Ballet Theatre, who was hobbled for the evening and using a cane.

“He’s in tomorrow night’s cast,” joked Weintraub, “so you might want to miss it.”

“As the national company of the country, I think Los Angeles deserves our presence,” said ABT artistic director Kevin McKenzie between bites of caprese. “And we get to add to the culture of this city, to its fabric, to its richness.”

“But I want to know why all the dancers didn’t get to take a bow,” asked Frank Raab, a tablemate of McKenzie’s. “I mean, the Harlots were so good, they contributed a lot.”

“Well, basically, you’re invested in the principal characters,” explained McKenzie, adding that the choreographer, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, had also choreographed the curtain calls in 1965, when the ballet was first danced by Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. By the time they took their bows, suggested McKenzie, “perhaps all the other dancers had gone home.”

Raab, who with his wife, Sally, has been a supporter of the Music Center for two decades, seemed only partly satisfied.

“But don’t they all like applause?” he asked, as waiters delivered desserts of panna cotta and apricot crostada, which were summarily ignored as Cornejo, out of costume and in street clothes, appeared at the table, causing everyone, including former ABT prima ballerina Martine van Hamel, to take on a reverent glow. One woman fanned herself; another made a “thump-thump” gesture over her heart. Did Cornejo realize the effect he was having? That he’d received the night’s most enthusiastic ovations?

“I’ll just say ...,” said the 22-year-old Argentine softly, and then flushed. “When you come onstage, and feel applause, and an audience that is so warm, for me, it is the best part of the show.”

Raab, for one, appreciated this final encore. “He glistens! He did!” he said as Cornejo passed to the next table. “That’s showbiz!”