... And a Fond Family Affair

A.B.T. hosts a festive hail and farewell

There was a more traditional celebration across Lincoln Center, at the Metropolitan Opera House, where the American Ballet Theater put on a 40th anniversary gala evening. A.B.T. does this sort of thing every five years or so for fun and fund raising, but this gathering had special meaning: it marked the 35th year that Lucia Chase and Oliver Smith have directed the troupe; in September Mikhail Baryshnikov will replace them.

Chase has long been the dominant force behind the big, ambitious and at times unwieldy company with its temperamental stars and eclectic repertory. Choreographer Agnes de Mille remarked that "Lucia is nine-tenths granite," probably an accurate assessment, but a side of Chase that the public did not see. Formerly a ballerina, she became a self-effacing impressario who stayed out of the spotlight, gave insipid interviews when talking at all, and quietly went on ordering up the baling wire to keep A.B.T. going.

Thus it was an odd sight to see not one but ten Lucia Chases onstage at the close of a three-hour show that mixed short excerpts and pas de deux with bows by beloved former dancers like Irina Baronova, Muriel Bentley, Sono Osato, Nora Kaye, Annabelle Lyon, Violette Verdy. Against a deeply shadowed backdrop, Chase seemed to appear in her old roles: actually dancers were costumed as the young girl who dances the prelude in Les Sylphides, the greedy virgin in Three Virgins and a Devil, the doll in Petrouchka, the Columbine in Carnaval, the eldest sister in Pillar of Fire, the stepmother in Fall River Legend, Juno in The Judgment of Paris, the fourth song in Dark Elegies, Queen Clementine in Bluebeard and the regal imperious Mother to such Princes in Swan Lake as Rudolf Nureyev and Anthony Dowell.

The tribute was imaginative and moving, and was a fair precis of the achievements of Chase and Smith at A.B.T. The company has kept alive the full-length classics, like Swan Lake, Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty. This season it will present Natalia Makarova's staging of the complete La Bayadere, one of Russian Choreographer Marius Petipa's influential creations, a ballet virtually unknown in the U.S. except for the famous last act. Similarly, the works of Fokine (Petrouchka, Les Sylphides, Firebird) are preserved in authentic stagings and style.

A.B.T. also encouraged innovation. In the '40s Jerome Robbins capered through Fancy Free, De Mille created Three Virgins and Fall River Legend, and Antony Tudor made dance dramas like Pillar of Fire. More recently A.B.T. has performed works by Eliot Feld and Glen Tetley and reaped a huge hit in Twyla Tharp's Push Comes to Shove. Chase has nurtured Americans like Cynthia Gregory and welcomed the Soviet comets, Nureyev, Makarova, Baryshnikov. The newest arrival, Alexander Godunov, hurled himself through the rousing pas de deux from Le Corsaire as a highlight of the gala.

Not all the A.B.T. dancing has been inspired or even precise; the company's relentless touring schedule alone would preclude that. The corps is capable of disciplined ensemble work and, on other occasions, some ragged footwork and wayward arms. The star system provides Americans with standard-setting performances, but not even Chase can always find a way to make virtuosos like Makarova, Gregory and Gelsey Kirkland flourish in harmony--or even appear in the same city. At curtain time, there was the usual clutter of telegrams. One began, "Rosalynn and I." A message from Baryshnikov, who was in Paris, burbled on to his "Lushinka."

Then the real Lucia Chase finally appeared (only she knows how old she is, but she looked effervescent and radiant in a fluffy pink dress). Alone in the spotlight, she seemed ill at ease and quickly beckoned all the dancers out from the wings. She hugged old comrades and youngsters just up from the corps. Later she likened them all to her clan.

Said she: "The 40th anniversary gala was genuinely one of the most joyous occasions this family has ever known. There was history, there was fun, there was sentiment, there was love. I never thought in 1945 that Oliver Smith and I would be directors more than temporarily. But that was 35 years ago. Those 35 years have brought me a kind of professional enjoyment that no sad moment, no difficult time, has clouded. It hasn't always been easy, but the company has grown and developed, and what more can any family ask for?"

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