Living by the Star System

By Robert T. Jones

Poor Romeo. He and his Juliet seem doomed to be endlessly reincarnated across the stages of the world. From Broadway to Hollywood, from La Scala to the Met, from the Bolshoi to Manhattan's New York State Theater, there is scarcely an evening when somewhere or other the young lovers are not locked in one another's arms. One of the most affecting renditions of their adaptable story is the dance created by Antony Tudor in 1943 for the American Ballet Theater (then known as just plain Ballet Theater). Last week, after several years out of the repertory, it was revived and remounted by Tudor for the ABT summer season at Lincoln Center.

His Romeo differs from the more familiar versions presented by the Stuttgart, Bolshoi, Royal Danish Ballet and England's Royal Ballet. Theirs are full-length, three-act pieces that use the muscularly bejeweled Prokofiev score. Tudor's 50-minute ballet is based on several wetly romantic pieces by English Composer Frederick Delius. Where Prokofiev pants, Delius sighs; where the Russian stomps, the Briton floats. Tudor, a pioneer in bringing psychological realism to ballet, matches the soft, antique mood of the score. The gemlike production looks like a Botticelli painting in motion.

Tudor's mime-laden choreography is ably danced by the ABT soloists. The Juliet of the premiere was Italy's Carla Fracci, whose gentle, girlish way of evoking youthful passion is complemented by the stiff, manly Romeo of Ivan Nagy. If their individual dancing styles do not always mesh, Tudor nonetheless is still able to make disunity work for, not against, the production.

Disunity remains the major problem of the ABT, the nation's oldest ballet troupe. Its star performers are second to none. Trouble is, there are almost as many styles as dancers, and more often than not, productions have a slightly underrehearsed look. Its secondary leads, and particularly the corps, vary from good to "good grief." When Natalia Makarova--the dazzling Russian defector who formerly starred with Leningrad's Kirov Ballet--floats to her forest glade in Swan Lake, the ragged corps resembles a Long Island duck farm rather than anything 19th century Choreographer Marius Petipa had in mind. Equally disheveled is a new ABT production this season of a Kirov specialty, Paquita; at times, the arm placement of the corps looks like a demonstration of semaphore signals.

Study in Sadism. Still, ABT has the widest repertoire of any company around, ranging from admirable productions of such classics as Swan Lake and Coppelia, to The River, a bluesy work by Modern Dancer Alvin Ailey. The company diligently polishes up a few new ballets each season. In addition to Paquita and Tudor's restaging of Romeo, the current novelties include Ulf Gadd's choreography of The Miraculous Mandarin, Bela Bartok's horrific musical study in sadism, and an airy piece called Mendelssohn Symphony by a promising dancer-choreographer, Dennis Nahat.

Besides variety, ABT offers star performances: Makarova, Fracci, Cynthia Gregory and Mimi Paul are classic stylists of the first rank. The company also has fiery, assertive Lupe Serrano and tall, angular Sallie Wilson, two extraordinary dancing actresses, plus a perky future star in young Zhandra Rodriguez. Guest Artist Erik Bruhn, particularly when partnering Fracci or Makarova, is still a paragon of courtliness and nobility. Bruce Marks, combining stateliness with passion in Jose Limon's The Moor's Pavane, excels in sheer dramatic power, while Ted Kivitt can produce, with seemingly incredible ease, the kind of skyward leaps and turns that electrify audiences.

American Ballet Theater lives by the old-fashioned star system--not, on the whole, a bad way to live. Clearly, the company might benefit by having a resident choreographer who could give more stylistic unity, and by having a stern ballet master to instill discipline into a group that sometimes looks as if it were making things up as it goes along.

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