Pan American Night

The New York City Ballet may not be the world's most disciplined dance company but it is one of the most consistently daring. Year after year it has bolstered its impressive repertory with new works as inventive as anything being done for the dance. Last week Artistic Director George Balanchine bundled all of this year's premieres into a single, two-hour package under the general title Panamerica, with music supplied by eight Latin American composers. None of the eight works was as good as the company's best, but several displayed the restless, experimental spirit that is the company's greatest asset.

Typical of how the experiments can sometimes go wrong was Sinfonia No. 2, with music by Uruguay's Hector Tosar and choreography by Jacques d'Amboise. A pretentious excursion into nightmare, it presented a terrified dreamer, garbed in the white pajama trousers of a mental patient, trying to flee with sleep-numbed feet through a midnight-black room from a band of hooded vigilantes.

On the pleasantly traditional side was Variaciones Concertantes, by Argentine Composer Alberto Ginastera with choreography by John Taras, an infectiously lyric piece in which two identically dressed ballerinas (Violette Verdy and Patricia Wilde), one diamond hard and the other willow soft, matched elastic leaps and turns in pursuit of a high-bounding hero.

The three other works of greatest interest were, predictably, by George Balanchine. Preludios para Percusion, set to a jazzily percussive score by Colombia's Luis Escobar, was an exercise in pure dance, which had Patricia Wilde and Erik Bruhn engaged in a tightly knit dialogue of movement with the kind of kinesthetic power that keeps an audience tensed in its seats. Sinfonia No. 5 suffered from a meandering, monotonously rhythmic score by Chavez (see below). But it was costumed with sly wit by Karinska, and it offered Balanchine a chance to practice, at somewhat too great length, the tortured convolutions of arm and torso that he delights in.

Best of the evening was Balanchine's Danzas Sinfonicas, to a score by Cuba's Julian Orbon. The music was high spirited, shot through with syncopated Latin American rhythm, into which Balanchine deftly fused classic dance movements. Star of the piece was Maria Tallchief, who, with loosely flowing hair, was able to echo the Caribbean flavor of the music while merely walking the breadth of the stage on pointe with a sinuously flowing stride. Even at less than its best, the New York City Ballet rarely wearies the eye.

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