Pa. Ballet's Balanchine program

LEWIS WHITTINGTON

As a young and inventive choreographer, George Balanchine fled the Russian Revolution with a band of dancers from the Mariinsky Theatre. In Germany they were observed by Diaghalev, who hired the troupe immediately for his Ballet Russe. Eventually Balanchine just kept traveling west and ended up in Hollywood, where he created dances for Busby Berkeley in Hollywood's dream factory of the 1930s.

In recent decades Balanchine's eclectic flame has been sustained by, among other companies, the Pennsylvania Ballet with an all-Balanchine program. This year the PAB presented that program after the month-long run of Balanchine's Nutcracker, which contains so many of his signature configurations. This was a smart move because the holiday warhorse serves as a tune-up for the dancers on Balanchine's vocabulary, and the company needed it this year.

After so many performances of the high-profile Swan Lake at the Edinburgh Festival last summer, the usually polished PAB women's corps looked ragged around the edges (and the men were dancing amok) when they returned to the Academy stage with Swan to open this season.

Since PAB prides itself in keeping Balanchine as their core syllabus, a program like this is a good way to take the company's pulse. By all indications, in this triple bill they have returned to a blood-red outfit with pulsing energy. Two of the three thematically diverse works on the winter bill underline Balanchine's rigorous demands on the corps de ballet.

Theme and Variations, Balanchine's tribute to the 19th-Century Russian court ballets of the Russia of his youth, features tight processionals and Western Symphony has the choreographer adapting those signature matrixes into hoe-down dose-e-does. These ballets showed more than a few shades of Balanchine as a relevant repertory for PAB.

The program's central work is actually Prodigal Son, scored to music by Serge Prokofiev; it's one of Balanchine's few surviving narrative masterpieces, made early in his career with the Ballet Russe before he came to the U.S. In the past it has made stars of some of the greatest male dancers, including Jerome Robbins, Edward Vilella and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Balanchine swiftly moves the story along in three scenes d'action, which makes it easier for American companies not extensively schooled in narrative story dance.

By now, such venerable works as Theme and Variations, scored to Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 3, can easily look brittle to modern audiences. The unison work can seem too regimented and the homage to pristine social order irrelevant. (PAB's revival of Balanchine's Raymonda Variations in 2005 showed just how terse such balletic nostalgia could be.)

No such problem in this piece. The corps' technical clarity flowed beautifully on the second-night performance and their solidity was confirmed for me in an equally vibrant matinee performance two days later. Sandra Jennings, the Balanchine Trust repetiteur— that is, the dance archivist who assures that the choreography will be passed down accurately to new dancers—kept the transitional unison phrasing crisp and paced out the choreographic variations, which provided windows to open this piece up.

In Theme and Variations the familiar Balanchine patterning and crowded limb twining was eclipsed by a laser-beam performance by principal dancer Arantxa Ochoa. Her partner Francis Veyette was initially stiff, but she loosened him up; by their second pas de deux the pair had moments of palpable chemistry. Veyette's jumps were air-slicing for a tall dancer, but he struggled on the turns with several sloppy exits. Ochoa has recently danced roles against her steely ballerina persona, but she's perfect when the part requires her to be just that. In the second cast, Julia Diana's technical flair was first-rate, but her frozen smile didn't warm the role for her, and her chemistry with James Ady (executing a quietly lyrical performance) never really fused.

Since PAB's beloved Jeffrey Gribler retired in 2001, Phillip Colucci has emerged as the best character dancer around, and he was born to play the lead character role of The Prodigal Son. Colucci, who holds a black-belt in karate, was the spitting image of Vilella (who was a boxer) and soared in the famous aerials that require him to tuck his leg under while his other leg is stabbing out.

Past the fireworks, Colucci disappeared behind the mask of this role physically, but there was a whole other interior performance communicated in his face and gestural acting. This production smartly leaned heavily on a storybook look and less psychological depth for Prodigal. The central seduction by The Siren was executed with smoldering coldness by the incandescent Riolama Lorenzo.

Colucci and Lorenzo burned up the stage in their seduction scene, which required as much acting skill as movement. Like Balanchine's sex scenes in Bugaku, where the Samari warrior and the Japanese princess consummate their wedding, such dance couplings are so intricate, involving the entire body, that if the dancers lack good chemistry or if they are not in character the result can resemble mechanical pornography.

In the second cast, the pairing of real-life husband-and-wife principal dancers Alexander "Sasha" Iziliaev and Arantxa Ochoa were equally effective. Ochoa, in a role at the other end of the spectrum from her regal ballerina in Theme, didn't miss a beat playing the bawdy, thieving Siren, who rolls and humiliates the wayward Prodigal.

Balanchine's Western Symphony is one of his rowdier bows to Americana, heavily influenced by his Hollywood years. . It's strung together by Hershy Kay to saloon honky-tonk piano, country fiddles and such traditional American melodies as "Goodnight Ladies" and "Red River Valley."

The women are costumed in pink, blue or green bustiers with tulle minis and sturdy heels, the men duding it up in black western shirts with red piping and Stetsons. Everything about this number works with PAB. One minute James Ihde and Heidi Cruz do a soft prairie waltz; and the next, four dudes are kickin' up the dust with bounding double tours en l'air. Balanchine actually plagiarizes himself here, lifting the Sugar Plum fairy solo from Nutcracker for a different kind of nutcracking saloon tart. Vixen ballerina Valerie Amiss lured Iziliaev away from the other delicate females just to toy with that cowboy's affections. Sasha's aw-shucks style fit this mood perfectly. The curtain comes down on the entire company, in a swirl of colorful rows doing pirouettes. It's certainly a mighty fine daguerreotype to come away with.