The Washington Post, by Alan M. Kriegsman

NEW YORK--Rudy’s back and Margot's got him--again. They’re still a sensation and they're still drawing bravos. But whether their latest joint venture, a two-wcok run at the Uris Theater long since sold out. is more a cause for rejoicing or for unxious concern is an open question. Even in ballet there can be too much of a good thing.

Mass popularity on the scale witnessed over the past couple of seasons is a heady new experience for dance. Understandably, dance artists and companies have been seeking to exploit the phenomenon for all its worth. The Panovs' much-heralded Westorn debut, for instance, was staged in a mammoth sports arena, and their Wolf Trap appearance even graduated to a nationwide TV hookup.

Eventually, however, there's liable to be a leveling off of the present dance craze, and it could be that overdoing the star hype will hasten the turnabout. It may not be insignificant that the Fonteyn-Nureyev opening night audience here began dribbling away before the evening's two premieres took place.

Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn and a small, ad-hoc troupe, to spell it out, are once more engaged in a program which has each of them dancing at every one of 13 scheduled performances. It is a revamping of the one they presented at the Kennedy Center last July, which was a new edition or a concept inaugurated at the Uris the preceding winter.

Tho current version includes a pair of U.S. premieres--a pas de deux from "Floresta Amazonica," which Sir Frederick Ashton created recently for Fonteyn, with a score by Villa-Lobos; and "Moments," choreographed especially for Nureyev by Murray Louis on the Ravel String Quartet, and premiered several months ago in Madrid.

It's true that whenever and wherever Fonteyn and Nureyev perform together, a unique interpersonal charisma emanates from the stage. This was certainly the ease at the opening Tuesday, when both dancers actually looked fresher and fitter than they did in Washington, and seemed to be wincing with a renewed impassioned vigor.

At the same time, one couldn't help wondering how long Fonteyn, now 56, and Nureyev, 37, can go on pushing themselves this way--especially Nureyev, who dances in all five of the evening's pieces and who has been scooting madly all year from one taxing assignment to another. Sure, he’s a miracle man, and he can alwpys recharge his flagging energies--as he did Tuesday night--for yet another spurt of brilliant pyrotechnics.

Sooner or later, though, this extravagant drain on his resources is bound to exact a toll. And apart from the matter of endurance, one wonders also how much longer tho market will bear the artificial format of a superstar smorgasbord. Make no mistake, there's more coming along this line. Martha Graham, for instance, has three more "galas" lined up for December, all of them involving Nureyev. It's interesting to note, though, that American Ballet Theater has shelved its plans for a January gala, perhaps seeing the handwriting on the box-office wall.

For the' moment, ticket demand is holding up nicely. At a top price of $18.50 ($20 for opening night), the Fonteyn-Nureyev engagement was completely sold out before it began. Yet there were those first-nighters heading for the exits even before the now Ashton and Murray Louis premieres had arrived, and neither work stirred more than polite acclaim excopt from the usual hard-core of ballet groupies.

The fact is, the only memorable aspect of the two new works is the sensitive way in which both Ashton and Louis have custom-tailored the choreography to suit the requirements of their respective leads. As for the rest of tho program, it has begun to look like a parlor trick that's been trotted out once too often. The applause is Pavlovian, and even the stars seemed to be feigning an involvement they arc now hard put to fool. Fonteyn’s technical inadequacy in the "Corsaire" pas de deux, moreover, is becoming painful to watch.

Maybe it's time to call a moratorium on these ballet revues, for a spell at least, and got back to the serious business of performing ballets. What's good for the box-office in the short haul may not be so healthy for the art of dance in the long run.

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)

For all its high spirits, the City Center Joffrey Ballet opening program at Wolf Trap Tuesday night seemed a bit too relentlessly frivolous. Last night, by way of contrast, the company gave us some of its strongest, pithiest properties, and the choices magnified the efforts of the dancers as well. Which is another way of saying that excellent choreography makes for excellent dancing.

The evening began with Frederick Ashton’s exquisitely austere "Monotones" and ended on an equally high plane with 'The Green Table," Kurt Jooss’ powerful affecting pacifist manifesto.

In 1932, the year he created "The Green Table," Jooss also composed a work for the Cologne Opera Ballet called "The Big City," to a score by Alexander Tansman. Though it was accoptcd as a kind of sequel to "The Green Table" and shares some expressionist imagery with the latter, it is actually of a quite different character. This year, "The Big City" has become one of the Joffrey's most notable new acquisitions, in a staging by Anna Markard, Jooss' daughter, with overall supervision by the 73-year-old choreographer himself.

"The Big City" has the rudiments of a story line, about a young woman who rebuffs a working class suitor and takes up instead with a rich swinger. But the ballet is essentially a panorama of urbnn impressions, depicting the jazz age types and classes of Middle Europe through the ways in which they dress, walk, dance and interact. The encounters of the girl, the infatuated worker and his affluent rival seem almost incidental to the shifting tableaux that surround them, which attempt to capture the look, the feel and the identity of a particular milieu.

The mood has much in common with the musical “Cabaret." Underneath the surface nonchalance and flirtation, there simmers a queasy sense of dread. What is so touching about the ballet despite its uneventfulness is the sensitive precision of Jooss' eye for character and the sincerity of his feeling. Though no one performance could be said to he outstanding, this is a work that displays the Joffrey company’s dramatic aptitudes to fine advantage.

The wonderfully frugal and exacting choreography of "Monotones" gives it a special, haunting quality. The spare, rueful lines of Ashton's steps and Sallo's music speak somehow of a comradeship born of shared loneliness, and the double trio of dancers put one in mind of Truffaut's menage a trois in "Jules and Jim." The cool, pristine performances by Starr Danias, William Whitener, Donna Cowen, Kevin McKenzie, Robert Thomas and the superb Pamela Nearhoof had the calm of still waters and the same running depths.

In "The Green Table," Christian Holder's Death didn't have quite the sinister bite the role requires. But Gary Chryst as the spidery Profiteer and Diana Cartier as the Guerilla Woman provided dance portraits of blistering intensity. Also on the program was Gerald Arpino's frothy, facile "Confetti," which received a sparkling performance from six company soloists.

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)

NEW YORK--A recent thaw in the political winds between the United Suites and Cuba set the stage for an extraordinary artistic event here Monday night, when internationally renowned Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso returned to a New York stage for the first time in 15 years.

Alonso, now in her mld-50s, appeared as a "surprise" guest artist during a fund-raising gala performance by American Ballet Theater at Lincoln Center’s New York State Theater, an occasion which also featured such curent ballet luminaries as Rudolf Nureyev, Erik Bruhn, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland and Cynthia Gregory, among others.

Alonso's performance of the White Swan pas de deux with her young Cuban partner. Jorge Esquivel, prompted the biggest audience demonstration of a bravo-filled evening. It was one of the longest and most unbuttoned ovations within memory, and it capped several years of quiet effort by ABT to secure Alonso’s return.

The Havana-born dancer studied here in the late '30s, joined the newly formed Ballet Theater in 1940, and rose to international prominence through her appearances with that company, Ballet Caravan, and later on the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. At her peak in the '50s, she was widely regarded as one of the world's supreme interpreters of the classic ballet repertoire, a distinction she shared only with Russia's Galina Ulanova and England's Margot Fonteyn.

The severance of U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961 abruptly terminated her career in this country. Alonso returned to Cuba where she had already formed a troupe of her own in 1948, which subsequently evolved under her direction into the National Ballet of Cuba, generously supported by the Castro government. Alonso is said to be on friendly personal terms with the Cuban premier, and State Department anxieties about the reactions of anti-Castro activists here stymied earlier attempts to bring Alonso back. A State Department source in Washington, however, confirmed yesterday that Alonso's present appearance was in line with recent policy "clarifications" allowing Cuban citizens to visit the United States for religious, scientific, or cultural purposes.

A small number of anti-Castro demonstrators showed up before and after the gala outsido the theater, bearing such signs as "Alicia Alonso has the blood of the Cuban people on her sleepers (sic)." Inside, though, her enraptured performance brought the entire audience to its feet in a body for 10 minutes of shouting, stamping, rhythmic applause and streaming confetti.

At the height of the uproar, a large banner was unfurled from an upper tier with the legend "Welcome, Alicia, Bienvenida!"

The reaction was justified by more than nostalgia. At her present age, Alonso has neither the shape nor the sinew she once possessed. Her thighs have thickened considerably in recent years, and her vision--her sight has been severely impaired for decades--is still reportedly troublesome despite corrective surgery.

Even so, it is doubtful there is another dancer of any who could have invested the White Swan adagio with the depth and range of feeling Alonso brought to it Monday evening. The manner of her dancing--immensely strong and vibrant but sublimely tender at the same time--is entirely her own, and it fills this familiar choreography with emotional reverberations that are hard to describe but shattering to perceive. There's not the slightest flick of movement in her performance that isn't integrally related to its expressive intent.

Hers is a Swan Queen in a total transport of bittersweet passion.

The obviousness of Alonso's artistic supremacy seemed all the more remarkable in the company of so much other stellar virtuosity. It was an incredible smorgasbord of ballet talents, generations and nationalities. The evening's emphasis was on dazzling pairings--pas de deux danced by Nureyev and Kirkland, Kirkland and Ivan Nagy, Nagy and Gregory, Gregory and ADT's new guest, Vladimir Gelvan, a Latvian dancer who left the Soviet Union this past spring, Baryshnikov with the visiting star of the Paris Opera Ballet, Noella Pontois.

Such an embarrassment of dance riches can scarcely be summarized in a brief space. What quivers most brightly on instant recall is a fervently attentive Nureycv dancing for the first time with Gelsey Kirkland, who looked lovelier and more fleetly seraphic than ever in the "Corsaire" duo; Baryshnikov blazing awesome aerial trails in "Don Quixote"; and a sublimely eloquent Martine van Hamel in a solo from "Solitaire." Galas are almost a cliche by now, but this was surely one for the books.

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)

What a difference a shift of perspective makes in matters of artistic judgment. It is a cliche, of course, that values are relative to a time, a place, a particular observer and that observer’s assumptions or biases. But this relativism has taken on a new, crucial and often overlooked importance lately. The speed of modern travel and communications and the mushrooming of the international performance circuit have combined to thrust an incredibly diverse assortment of events before our eyes in the briefest interval of time. In a mere month here in Washington, in the field of dance for instance, we’ve seen the Bolshoi Ballet, the Stuttgart Ballet, the Panovs, and the current Fonteyn-Nureyev production--one on top of the other without pause.

The effect of this unprecedented compression, which we are now obliged to accept as a constant of our cultural situation for better or worse, is often one of blurred perceptions. To be sure, the plenitude of performers, performances, styles and companies affords rare opportunities for side-by-side comparison, which is all to the good.

At the same time, everything tends to get thrown into the same pot when it comes to weighing one’s responses. The pace of change is so heady and unrelenting that fine points and finicky distinctions are frequently lost in the shuffle. Instead, we’re induced to see every event against the same background and to use the same measuring rods for each. In the process, it is easy to lose sight of exactly those attributes which make what we’re seeing at any given moment special, individual or unique.

But it is only awareness of just this kind of particularity which permits usto savor each artistic experience for its own inimitable merits. Otherwise, we are forever doomed to bemoaning the shortcomings of one thing by the standards of another--the Stuttgart isn't the Bolshoi, one hears, or the Bolshoi isn’t American Ballet Theater; Panov isn’t Nureyev, and Nureyev isn't Baryshnikov. Certainly none of these equations hold true, but then neither do the converses--Baryshnikov isn’t Nureyev either, for instance. And it is precisely the individual crux we may miss by lumping everything together indiscriminately.

Take "Raymona," for example--the new Nureyev staging of the Petipa classic which ABT has mounted in Houston and New York and will be bringing to the Kennedy Center this fall.

Regarded as dance drama, by the standards of the Stuttgart’s "Eugene Onegin," say, or Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," this patently artificial yarn about a young noblewoman torn between a virtuous crusader and a lustful Saracen looks like just so much frivolous poppycock. But seen as an example of choreographic architecture, it becomes a veritable feast of artistic delights.

Nureyev’s brilliant production has complicated the picture, it is true, by underscoring the deeper psychological implications of the original tale. In his version, the conflict between crusader and infidel is turned into a dream, representing the warring factions of a maturing girl’s fantasy, chastely romantic on the one side and illicitly erotic on the other. But the emphasis remains squarely on dance values, and the choreography strives for congruence, not primarily with any dramatic action of feeling, but with the shapes and rhythms of Glazunov’s sumptuously atmospheric music.

The same see saw of evaluation applies to the ballet events that have graced Washington this past month, the tilt depending upon the vantage point from which each is viewed. In the case of the Stuttgart Ballet, the see-saw, as reflected in the critical commentary of the press both locally and elsewhere, has swung between the wildest of extremes. It Isn't hard to account for the disparities of opinion, once a relativity of standards is granted. Stacked against the massive Bolshoi, with all the Soviet Union as a recruiting ground for its dancers and 200 years of choreographic tradition behind it, or against American Ballet Theater, with its vast, varied repertoire and formidable supply of principals, the young, comparatively modest and highly specialized Stuttgart troupe is bound to seem wanting in bravura and diversity.

If, however, one sets the recent Stuttgart performances here beside the work of lesser eminences--the National Ballet of Canada, say, or the late lamented National Ballet of Washington, for that matter--the particular effulgence and appeal of the company stands forth instantly. And if one puts the Stuttgart troupe into its native milieu--the ballet scene in continental Europe today--the magnitude of its achievement becomes even clearer.

In the midst of a ballet desert, John Cranko nursed a seedling to beautiful flowering maturity. In a small German city, in a country almost proverbially antipathetic to ballet art, this gifted choreographer founded and built a company of international stature, and endowed it with a distinctive style and content of its own. This was a miracle of sorts, and it is no less of a wonder now, when the troupe is undergoing an unavoidably traumatic shakedown under its new director, Glen Tetley, merely because the traffic of contemporary touring has tossed it into the arena with the biggest, flashiest companies of the world.

As the Kennedy Center engagement made clear, Stuttgart has its problems. The Cranko legacy is not unlimited, and not all of it holds to the persuasive level of "Romeo and Juliet" or "Eugene Onegin." And at less than his best, Cranko tended to rely to heavily on the merely picturesque or ornamental. Tetley, his successor, has begun to open the company to refreshing new influences, both through his own modern-oriented work and by importing ballets from such promising sources as Antony Tudor and Eliot Feld. Unquestionably, though, Tetley--whose own creations vary from the eloquence of "Voluntaries" to the empty strivings of "Arena"--faces a massive challenge ahead. Whether he can muster the right mix to sustain the momentum the company has gained over the past decade is a question only the future itself can settle.

The main point about the Stuttgart Ballet, however, is that even in its present unsettled state it has qualities to offer that are not to be found elsewhere. The same can be said of the Bolshoi, which has been denigrated in some quarters recently for its garish excesses, its sometimes mechanical choreography, its debilitating baggage of "socialist realism," and its general air of heavyhanded conservatism. Once again a matter of yardsticks. The Bolshoi may not be the flawless paragon Western observers almost universally held it to be in former times, but this venerable institution still has a way with ballet that has no parallel outside Moscow. The brawn and energy of the Bolshoi men, the ineffable suavity of its women and the heroic dimensions of its stagecraft--these are not assets to be written off as passe, no matter how much at variance they may be with our own contemporary concepts. What's more, the company’s creative wellsprings are far from dry. In retrospect, "Ivan the Terrible" seems an especially memorable enterprise in its somber majesty.

It ought to be obvious that no one company or dancer can fulfill every criterion of excellence all at once, and that appraisal must be tailored to the individual case. It would be pointless to expect Valery and Galina Panov, after two years of harassment and enforced idleness, to become stellar performers overnight, just as it would be foolhardy to look to Margot Fonteyn for the speed and strength of a dancer three decades her junior, or to Rudolf Nureyev for the resilience and eclat he commanded 10 years ago. Each of these artists, however, still has something treasurable to give the world, born of his or her own unique background, insight and sensibility. And their recent appearances here only confirm that what they’ve got is of far more compelling significance than what they haven’t. The moral: Let’s count our blessings for they are many--the blemishes we’ll always have with us.

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)

NEW YORK--If someone had suggested a decade ago that a day would soon come when the President’s wife, two supreme artists of the classical ballet and the world’s greatest living exponent of modern dance would all publicly embrace one another on a Broadway stage, the idea probably would have been laughed to scorn. That impossible dream came true Thursday night, however, as Martha Graham, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev and Betty Ford together acknowledged the standing cheers of the celebrity studded crowd at the Uris Theater following the world premiere of Graham’s "Lucifer."

This was a constellation devoutly to be wished and the rarest of sights--politics paying obeisance to art and art playing an astutely political game, in the interests of its own survival. The moment was historic and unique, and the evening of which it was a part engendered a strange mixture of feelings, including wonderment, exaltation and not a little poignant melancholy.

The occasion was the gala benefit for the 50th anniversary of Martha Graham s Dance Company staged in hope of wiping out the troop's accumulated deficit of $75,000 and also to secure a nest-egg for its future. With the help of a glittering array of patrons who had paid from $50 to $10,000 for the privilege of attendance, nearly $200,000 was raised toward this goal at a single stroke.

The evening also saw the debut of "Lucifer," created specially by Graham as a vehicle for Nureyev and Fonteyn. The performance afforded Nureyev his long-desired first crack at the Graham idiom, and at the same time marked Fonteyn’s first appearance ever in a modern dance composition. The work, like so many others by Graham, is a ritual celebration of life’s mystery, and the impression left by a first viewing was of a colossus in itself mystifying--at once stark, heroic. crude, nebulous, grotesque and exotic. In its context, Nureyev and Fonteyn seemed both apt and alien. For the two of them, the event had simultaneously the aspect or rebirth and fulfillment, of a dawning of new possibility and a point of no return.

It was an occasion so heavily fraught with symbolic significance, though, that the particulars were overwhelmed by their broader implications. Whether or not "Lucifer" would prove to be a major addition to the Graham canon seemed almost beside the point. This was, in any case, one of the most startling esthetic detentes of the century--an unforeseen (though probably inevitable) reconciliation of the modern dance movement with the very phenomenon--classical ballet--it had set forth 50 years earlier to repudiate.

Possibly the only parallel in contemporary annals was the musical capitulation in the mid ’50s of arch neo-classicist Igor Stravinsky to the radical 12-lonc methodology of Arnold Schoenberg.

In another sentence, one couldn't help but feel that the evening’s unseen main character was time, time, both as victor and vanquished. Nureyev, Fonteyn and Graham, each in a different way, bore witness to the inevitability of time’s march. At 82, Graham is now confined to the sidelines of an art in which she reigns supreme as a performer as well as choreographer for half a century. Fonteyn, at 56, dances on, as she did Thursday night both in the "Swan Lake" adagio and "Lucifer," but only fitful echoes remain of the majesty of her prime. Nureyev is still going strong at 37, of course. Yet, as the evening demonstrated. every performance he now undertakes puts ever greater strain on once peerless and still formidable virtuosity.

Then there’s the other side of the coin. With his every intrepid step into unconquered territory, Nureyev continues to prove that nothing in dance can long remain foreign to his talents. By a similar token, Fonteyn’s persistence shows us how much more grace and wisdom count in the long run than mere technical facility. And Graham’s triumph over lime is the most complete of all. Not only is her hieratic presence on a stage more awesome than a virtuoso’s most daring flight, but also her unflagging creativity continues to augment a choreographic monument--over 150 dance works of unrivaled originality and strength--that no age can wither.

In speaking about her 1930 solo work. "Lamentation," which was also performed Thursday evening (by taking Lyman), Graham asserted that she had been in search "of the magic of gesture and the meaning of movement." "Lucifer" represents another foray in that same quest. Graham has always been a sort of cartographer of the human spirit, and here she is seen again as a chartmaker, mapping out the dark and brilliant byways of human souls.

As Graham herself has explained, Lucifer, her protagonist and alter ego, signifies in this work not Satan but a Promethan bearer of light, a fallen god become half human, divine in his creative spark but mortal in his pride, doubt and suffering. The choreography assumes the general outline of a combat or duel, between Nureyev’s Lucifer, as the light of day, and Night, the fearful, enticing and erotic goddess portrayed by Fonteyn. At first blush one almost would have thought the casting more logical the other way around with the stealthy subtle equivocal Nureyev as darkness and the bright open Fonteyn as day. But there's no question that Graham has fashioned the movement to suit her soloists--rising, lunging, mercurial turbulence for the Tartar Nureyev and queenly, confidently seductive authority for the patrician Fonteyn.

Fonteyn looked more comfortable in her role than her partner, but this may well have been due to Graham's concessions to her balletic breeding and and a physically less taxing assignment. Nureyev’s dancing had an odd ungainlincss that was both potently expressive and disconcerting, but a recently injured ankle may have kept him from the security he obviously sought.

The rest of the cast of 13 danced splendidly. There was, however, a curious discordancy between the primitive austerity of Graham’s choreography and the almost belligerently flamboyant decor--Leandro Locsin’s craggily volcanic set pieces, and Halston’s grossly iconic capes and loincloths. The acerbic musical score by Halim El-Dabh is serviceably atmospheric rather than distinguished.

There was much more to the evening than “Lucifer," including an extremely touching "Swan Lake" pas de deux with Fonteyn and Nureyev recollecting their long-accustomed role in wan tranquility, and samples of the older Graham repertoire including an especially incandescent "Diversion of Angels," sparked by the exquisite lyricism of Takako Asawaka. As a whole, the evening was extraordinary of its kind, but it must be quickly added that the genre is automatically exhausted by this single unrepeatable instance. It is bound for a long life in the archives of memory.

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)

In a sense, the coming appearance of the Bolshoi Ballet at the Kennedy Center, starting Tuesday evening and continuing for 8 performances through next Sunday afternoon, will represent a return to the sources of the art.

It may not be stretching things too far to trace the current American fervor over ballet companies and ballet stars to the public’s discovery of the 200-year-old Bolshoi, the pride of Soviet Russia, more than a decade and a half ago. When Sol Hurok first brought the company to the United States in 1959, the visit had the force of a revelation.

Ballet on such a grandiose, richly outfitted scale was not something the West was accustomed to, then. For large segments of the dance public, "Bolshoi" came to mean the aristocratic summit of ballet, in the same way that the Rolls Royce was identified in public consciousness as the supreme image of the motor car. A Bolshoi production implied sumptuous decor, spectacular effects, a theater of fantasy and exoticism, dancing of awesome grandeur and floridity, and a level of pyrotechnical display that summoned audiences to unprecedented outbursts of enthusiasm.

The curious thing, of course, was that the Bolshoi was an emissary from a land that had been swept by a "proletarian revolution," from a country that seemed in so many other ways to be hellbent on erasing every vestige of its imperial, autocratic past. But contradictory as it may have appeared to West eyes, revolutionary zeal stopped short at the doors of the Bolshoi. The audience may have been "democratized," but not the cultural heritage of which the Bolshoi was a prime guardian.

It has been nearly 10 years since the Bolshoi visited the West in full regalia. In between, we’ve had some teasing and in many ways deceptive samplers. A greatly reduced troupe, for instance, was seen at Wolf Trap only two summers ago with a number of the same principals as arc appearing on the current tour, including Nina Sorokina, Ludmila Semenyaka, Maris Liepa, Yuri Vladimirov, Vyacheslav Gordeycv and Yuri Popko. But the repertoire shown at Wolf Trap consisted mainly of tidbits and excerpts, showy but insubstantial vignettes like "The Flames of Paris," "The Ocean and the Pearls," "Spring Waters" and so on.

This time around the touring company numbers 150, most of them dancers, and the programs are all devoted to evening-length multi-act ballets--"Swan Lake," "Sleeping Beauty," "Giselle," "Spartacus" and "Ivan the Terrible." Washington will see only the last three of these, but it is worth noting that “Giselle” is the only production previously exported —the others, both modern and traditional, are new to American eyes.

The point is that the Bolshoi has not been standing still as a company, even if Westerners have not been directly privy to the changes as they took place. With the current visit, however, we will have a chance to take wholesale measure of the company. Much hps happened on our domestic ballet scene in the interim, of course, some of it as a result of exposure to the Bolshoi. One consequence is that the gulf between Western and Soviet troupes is not so formidable as it once may have seemed.

There’s still only one Bolshoi, however, and it remains the world’s largest ballet enterprise. A significant change in the company image, however, is that it is no longer so much the star dancer as it is the company’s artistic director--Yuri Grigorovich--who gives the Boshol its present personal stamp. The 48-year old native of Leningrad, who has choreographed or re-staged everything in the touring repertory with the exception of "Giselle," has made the company into a mirror of his own vibrant artistic identity.

In relation to the Bolshoi's immediate past, the ascendancy of Grigorovich--he has been artistic director since 1964, when he left the Kirov Ballet--has meant a renewed emphasis on the conveying of dramatic content through dance, instead of through mime. A certain dichotomy of approach has divided Russian tradition in ballet, as epitomized in the work of Fokine, who championed a "realistic" depiction of dramatic action, and the older Petipa, whose concern was "pure" dance. Leonid Lavrovsky, who was the predecessor of Grigorovich at the Bolshoi, was more or less of Fokine's peruaslon. Grigorovich leans toward the Petipa stance.

In New York a few weeks ago, Grigorovich, his taut frame still hinting at the compressed energy of his earlier career as a performing dancer, lounged in a hotel armchair and talked avidly (in Russian) about himself and the Bolshoi.

One of the most elaborate of the current productions is "Ivan the Terrible," which Grigorovich choreographed to the music Prokofiev composed for the celebrated Eisenstein films on the life of the 16th-century Czar. Grigorovich spoke about the genesis of the ballet, which had its premiere earlier this year in Moscow.

"Much more than the film, it was the personality of Ivan, and Prokofiev's music, which provided my inspiration. I have always adored Prokofiev's ballet music ("The Stone Flower," for the Kirov Ballet in 1957, was his first notable success as a choreographer). Eisenstein's work is immensely interesting, but cinematography and ballet, it seems to me, require entirely different modes of expression. But the historical figure of Ivan, so contradictory, powerful and influential, attracted me deeply. He did everything in his means to unify the nation. But for Ivan, you wouldn't have the chance to sit here and interview Mr. Grigorovich now. Of course, great as he was. he was also 'the Terrible,' fierce, cruel and jealous, and that too is part of his fascination."

Grigorovich views "Ivan the Terrible" less as a historical reconstruction. however, than as a visionary comment on the Russian soul. "The essential theme is the nature of the Russian character, the traditions of loyalty and heroism, the ethics and morals of the individual Russian. The ballet actually centers not on Ivan the Terrible, but on the Russian people," he has noted elsewhere.

Like "Ivan," "Spartacus" is a gigantic piece of stage pageantry with an epochal setting, in this case imperial Rome. "Spartacus," choreographed by Grigorovich in 1968 on a score by Aram Khatchaturian, is a more straightforward rendering of heroic action, with a plot depicting the familiar revolt of the slave Spartacus against the tyranny and oppression of his Roman masters. Much has been made by critics of the vast differences in interpretation by the several leading dancers who assume the title role. Had Grigorovich, like so many Western choreographers, devised the part with one particular executant in mind?

Interestingly enough, the answer was no. "What I am trying to project in my choreography is a specific image or character. At the same time, I always bear in mind the fact that a given role may be performed today by one dancer, and tomorrow by quite another. So my first thought is always for the image, and my effort is to try to make the dancer subservient to this image. Inevitably, however, the dancer with whom one works exerts an influence of his own. To conceive an image is one thing, and to see someone actually perform it is quite different, usually. That is why whenever a ballet undergoes a change of cast, perhaps as much as 15 percent of the work is transformed. The mere physical difference between dancers accounts for some of this. And each one is an individual. Some dancers turn more easily to the right, others to the left--even as insignificant a fact as this can alter the substance of the choreography."

While in New York, I saw the Grigorovich version of "Swan Lake," first mounted at the Bolshoi Theater in 1969 and now being exhibited in this country for the first time. It seemed altogether more satisfying in concept than in realization, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, this may be the first "Swan Lake" in history to make do without a lake, at least until the concluding scene. And the setting for the lake shore of Act II looks incongruously like Grand Canyon.

The conception of the drama, however, is full of arresting elements. The part of Von Rothbart, the evil magician, for instance, which in more traditional stagings is restricted to menacing gestures, is here fleshed out with considerable dance content. And the striking thing about the choreography is how closely Von Rothbart’s movements parallel those of Prince Siegfried.

Grigorovich confirmed that it was his idea to intimate that Von Rothbart might be the Prince’s alter ago. "No one is completely one sided," he said. "Everyone, even a noble prince, must have a dark side. And I don’t think it’s by accident we call this darker side our 'evil genius,’ which is just what Von Rothbart is. He tries to seduce Siegfried, to tempt him with alluring images. He’s a kind of double, or 'Doppelganger,’ as in the German mythical tradition."

What about the happy ending Grigorovich contrives, with the Prince never quite yielding to Von Rothbart’s blandishments, and vanquishing him in the finale, leaving Siegfried and Odette free to live blissfully ever after? It has been rumored in some quarters that Grigorovich really wanted to have the ballet end tragically, but that Soviet officialdom frowned upon, such a "decadent," downbeat conclusion.

Grigorovich skirted the question of official censure, and laid the matter at the feet of public preference. "The fact is,” he said, "we have a tradition in Russia that the ballet should end this way. It’s a fairy tale, and people are used to having fairy tales end with a victory of the good forces over the evil ones. Yes, I had thought of making the ending more tragic, and I turned it over in my mind many times many different ways. I’ve changed it once, and I may well change it again. It’s true that Tchaikovsky’s score provides for tragedy, and the drowning of Siegfried in the lake. It is appealing to think of Odette as the ideal, the dream Siegfried pursues. And when he abandons her to chase after another, he betrays the dream, and the ideal dies.

"Yes," he added slowly, toying smilingly with the notion, "perhaps I'll change the ending again..."

His own dreams for the future, Grigorovich says, include choreographing his own versions of all the Prokofiev ballet scores he has not yet gotten around to, including "Romeo and Juliet" and "Cinderella," and he would like to get started on this project as soon as possible. Before that, however, he will compose a new, full-length ballet, with a scenario of his own, about contemporary Soviet youth. "It will concern the life, the work, the love of Soviet young people today, everything about them. I plan to begin the work in September, when we have returned from touring, and I expect it will be finished by about next March."

Does Grigorovich detect any difference in the reactions of the American public to the company now, as compared to his last trip here with the Bolshoi in 1966?

"I cannot really say so," was the reply. "We have had very warm, very enthusiastic receptions, both then and now, we certainly cannot complain. What I can say is that the American public is a very special one for us-- they respond strongly and they are not afraid to show it. That is a very gratifying thing for ballet artists."

The following are some details of principal casting for the Kennody Center engagement.

In "Spartacus," Tuesday evening (opening night): Vladimir Vasiliev, Nina Sorokina, Maris Liepa, Nina Timofeyeva; Wednesday evening: Yuri Vladimirov, Sorokina, Boris Akimov, Tatiana Golikova; Thursday evening: same as Tuesday; Saturday evening: Mikhail Lavrovsky, Sorokina, Mikhail Gabovich, Golikova.

In "Ivan the Terrible," Friday evening: Vladimirov, Natalia Bessmertnova, Akimov; Sunday afternoon: Vasiliev, Bessmertnova, Akimov.

In "Giselle," Wednesday afternoon: Bessmertnova, Lavrovsky; Saturday afternoon: Timofeyeva, Liepa.

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)

The three ballets that make up the New York City Ballet's all-Stravinsky program, unveiled last night at the Kennedy Center, divide into two hits and a miss. "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" and "Symphony in Three Movements," both created by George Balanchine for the 1972 Stravinsky Festival, are major choreographic achievements. "Firebird," a Balanchine-Jerome Robbins collaboration of 1970, is one of the company’s very few turkeys.

Yes, even Mr. B., whom one might think incapable of making bad ballets, has come up with an occasional clinker, and “Firebird” is one of them.

It is easy to find reasons why "Firebird" has persisted so long in the repertoire. The score was the first Stravinsky ever composed specifically for dance. The initial staging in 1910, by Fokine for the Diaghilcv troupe, was a balletic milestone in several respects. When Diaghilev revived it in 1926, Balanchine himself was cast as Kastchei, the bogey-man of the fairy-tale plot, which may explain the latter’s obsession with the piece.

Balanchine’s first setting of the music for the New York City Ballet in 1949, which used the Marc Chagall sets designed for an earlier production by Ballet Theater, became a celebrated vehicle for Maria Tallchief, one of the company’s first superstars and Balanchine’s wife at the time of the premiere.

None of this, however, mitigates the tedium of the current revision, concocted by Balanchine and Robbins in 1970, at which time the Chagall decor was enlarged and repainted to fit the New York State Theater, the company’s Lincoln Center residence.

I’m not sure Chagall’s designs, for all their fragant fancy, were ever right for "Firebird." They’re too tame and benevolent, they lack any sense of menace or dark, magical power. And some of the costumes are downright ridiculous. Kastchei resembles a Disney beetle and his minions look more like party favors than monsters. The Firebird’s costume provides the ballet’s one note of excitement--will the ballerina trip over the "tail" or won’t she. Finally, the choreography itself is utterly bland and wanting in profile.

The current version has one redeeming virtue. It is shorter than its predecessors. Colleen Neary made a nicely imperious Firebird, and Nina Fedorova a beautiful Princess, but to little avail.

Fortunately, the other two ballets provide more than ample compensation. Both scores are examples of Stravinskian neo-classical cool, sparse and brittle in instrumentation, framed in a metrical rigor that is contradicted at every turn by syncopations and skew rhythms.

"Symphony in Three Movements" is the more grand, symphonic, and "objective" of the two, its kaleidoscopic groupings constituting a kind of kinetic trigonometry.

"Stravinsky Violin Concerto" melti the composer’s cool now and then with a warming lyricism. Like the solo violin melodies, the dancers' movements slalom in, under and around the recurring musical pulse. The curdled melancholy of the "Aria II" movement is a high point, as was its matchless performance by Kay Mazzo and Peter Martins.

Sara Leland and Edward Villella headed a spunky cast for the "Symphony" and Karin von Aroldingen and Bart Cook were the splendid complementary couple in "Violin Concerto."

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)

When Carolyn Brown arrived at the University of Maryland in January to become artist-in-residence for nine weeks at the invitation of the dance department, neither she nor her hosts could have known that the piece she would create for the departmental ensemble would turn out to be a major dance work.

Yet "Circles," which received its premiere performance Monday evening and will be repeated tonight, is just that, and 'perhaps even "masterwork" is not to exalted a term to apply to it. It is a work that speaks instantly to the senses, the mind and heart, and it holds one rapt from beginning to end with the radiance of its form and energy.

It is no surprise, on the other hand, that such a work should come from the imagination of Carolyn Brown. From 1953 to 1973. she was a principal dancer with Mercc Cunningham, and his partner both in performance and choreography. Those who watched her during those decades, glorious both for the Cunningham troupe and Brown personally, were privileged to see a purity, a sense of commitment and a virtuosic command that have had very few parallels anywhere in the world of contemporary dance.

She has always been an unusually articulate dancer as well. Her article in Ballet Review some years ago about chance and indeterminacy in Cunningham's work, for instance, is still a model of lucidity and insight, as well as the best piece of writing on the subject one can find.

"Circles," calling for 10 dancers and set to the music of Terry Riley’s "A Rainbow in Curved Air" (for electric organ), is a reflection of the clarity and ingenuity of Brown’s choreographic impulses. Partly inspired by the large oval space offered by the university’s union ballroom, it fills that space with images rich in mystery, playfulness and poetic awe.

As an abstract composition, "Circles" has no "plot," but it might be said to be about the tension between symmetry and disruptive dynamism, or between cosmic constancy and earthly change.

The movement, like Riley’s music, has a certain "wheels within wheels" redundancy about it. But where the circles, large and small, in which the dancers gyrate suggest celestial order and harmony, the flying tangents, spirals and eddies in which they break away seem to express the propulsions and instabilities of mortal life. However one interprets it, the shapes and rhythms of the dance evolve according to a rigorous kinetic and emotional logic that binds the rich detail of the choreography into a compelling whole.

As for the performance, never did student dancers look less like students. The five young men and women of the ensemble exhibited all the strength, precision and spirit of a professional troupe, and an inspired one at that. The excellently designed lighting and costumes were no small help. It will bp a grievous shame if no one takes the trouble to record "Circles" on videotape, lest it suffer the oblivion of loo many other new dance creations. Certainly, this is one that cries out for preservation.

Tonight’s repeat program, starling at 8 p.m., also includes Brown’s "Synergy III,” and selected contemporary music. For information, call 454-4056.

(Courtesy of The Washington Past.)

Dance and film--they are kindred spirits In more ways than one. The mutual linkages between them will be explored in a new AFI subscription series, "Dance on Film," which starts Monday evening and will continue for 11 successive weeks in all. The series ; Is rampant with obvious attractions--names like Nureyev, Fonteyn, Vlllella and Astaire, companies like the Royal and the Kirov Ballet, slices of legendary dance history featuring the creations of Lole Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, Mary Wigman, Martha Graham.

But above and beyond the individual enticements, the series as a whole is likely to afford some special insights into the longstanding symbiotic relationship between motion pictures and the dance. Both are arts, after all, which depend on an expressive shaping of movement through space and time, though the movement may be illusory In the one case and real in the other. Both have been given to the cultivation of vast, gaudy spectacles, requiring the collaboration of many associated crafts and skills. But both have also been practiced by lone visionaries, working apart from and sometimes against the mainstream, Both have been studded with "stars," performers of exceptional presence, magnetism and virtuosity. And both are enjoying a contemporary upswing in popularity, as forms of communication especially in tune with the sensibilities of an era geared to dynamism and imagery.

Dance is as old as the hills and movies are relatively young, but the affiliation between them began at the soonest possible juncture. Dance numbers were included in the earliest recorded movie projections on a public screen in the mid-1890's--variety acts from Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in New York City, and "art" dances by Annabelle, who appears in some fugitive clips in the AFI’s opening program Monday night. Dancers and dancing continued to be a recurrent motif throughout the silent era, as the Chaplin shorts alone clearly testify. With the arrival of the sound film, dance gained a powerful toehold on the terrain of the musicals, from the first of the genre, through the glorious Astaire-Rogers days, the astonishing stunts of Busby Berkeley, and many other peaks right on up to "West Side Story" and "Fiddler on the Roof."

Aside from these self-evident intrusions of dance into film for sheer entertainment value, dance sequences crop up constantly in the panorama of movie history as dramatic instruments of particularly forceful impact. One thinks of the climactic dance-hall scenes in such films as Murnau's "Sunrise," or the ineffably comic spectacle of Laurel and Hardy stepping lively together in "Way Out West," or Chaplin’s little ballet with the globe in "The Great Dictator," or the magically cool cafe trio in Godard’s "Bande a part," or the teenage writhlngs of "American Graffiti," and the list could be extended indefinitely.

To a vastly lesser extent, film has also played its role as an ingredient of dance, from the time of Rene Clair's daffy, surrealist "Entr’acte" (1924, with Man Ray, Erik Satie, and Marcel Duchamp in the cast), filmed aa an intermission piece for the Satie ballet, "Relache," to the erotic projections used by such contemporary choreographers as Yvonne Rainer and Robert Joffrey.

No one film series could hope to encompass all these aspects adequately. And because the AFI Theater devotes the bulk of its time to all the broad ramifications of film art, "Dance on Film" will concentrate on the choreographic side of the entente--on dancers and performances who can now be seen only through the medium of film; on great artists or companies caught in moments of particular radiance; on performers and works of other times and places, or otherwise difficult of access.

Even so, the field is enormous enough and attempts to be comprehensive or exemplary are bound to be beset by a variety of obstacles. It would be wonderful, for instance, to show even remnants of the careers of Isadora Duncan or Vaclav Nijinsky, but incredible as it sometimes seems, no such remnants have been found to exist (except for one disputed scrap in the case of Isadora). Some precious footage of other dancers which is known to exist can’t be shown because of legal tangles over proprietorship or exhibition rights.

Much, too, that once existed is now lost or hidden, perhaps irretrievably. Even so recent a production as the original feature film version of Balanchine’s "Midsummer Night’s Dream"--a spendid example of its genre, by the way--seems to be unavailable anywhere for public viewing.

In the face of such difficulties, the AFI series, which one may hope to be only the first of many to come, is both a fine introduction and reasonably representative. As chosen by David L. Parker, a film historian at the Library of Congress who himself has made some excellent dance films, the series offers a few features which have been shown commercially in past years, but mostly a selection of intriguing material that would be hard or impossible for most of us to see under other circumstances.

Dances are put onto film to serve a variety of differing and sometimes conflicting goals. Sometimes a dance is recorded simply to preserve it, to guard its ephemeral contour and texture against the ravages of time or memory. Sometimes a dance is filmed as an aid to pedagogy or scholarly research. In other cases, all the complex and expensive machinery of commercial cinema is brought to bear on a dance production, to turn it into as viable a theatrical commodity as possible. In still other instances, the aim is something known as "cinedance," in which the filmmaker strives to exploit the specifically choreographic proprieties of the motion picture, and to create something which isn’t either "pure" film or "pure" dance, but an elusive cross-breed which will partake of the strengths of both media.

All these approaches are illustrated in the “Dance on Film" series, as well as several combinations thereof. Indirectly, too, the series will disclose the inevitable strains that arise between the demands of the choreographer or dancer and those of the filmmaker. Dance and film may be kindred, but they are far from identical, and the contest between the needs of each spawns tensions that may or may not be satisfactorily resolved. As in other fields, the caliber of the results depends almost entirely on the talent or insight of the people fnvolved.

Among the items to be seen in coming programs of the series are: the Bolshoi Ballet in a 1961 film of "Cinderella," with Raissa Struchkova in the title role; excerpts from the work of such modem dance pioneers as Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Mary Wigman and Ted Shawn; "Swan Lake," in a Kirov Ballet production that features Valery Penov as the Jester; an evening of jazz dance; a program devoted to dance therapy and education; several Royal’Ballet films; a cinedance sampler; an evening highlighting the Afro-American tradition; and a survey of such contemporary masters as Cunningham, Sokolow and Hawkins.

Each program (to be shown twice at 6 p.m. and again at 9 in two separate subscriptions) will be introduced by someone especially well versed in the evening’s fare. The first program, for example, will be hosted by Marcia Siegel, author of "At the Vanishing Point" and one of the most broadly perceptive dance critics in the field.

The program is called "An Anthology of Great Performers" and it’s a corker. The content ranges from fascinating tum-of-the-century snippets showing Annabelle, Loie Fuller and the Royal Danish Ballet in charateristic passages, to longer excerpts featuring Anna Pavlova, Maya Plisetskaya, Edward Villella, Alicia Markova, Galina Ulanova, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. At Siegel’s request, an Astaire sequence was added, and it’s a spiffy, infrequently seen tap number from the 1940 Paramount feature, "Second Chorus," with Fred leading Artie Shaw’s band and dancing like a firecracker at the same time.

In some respects the most extraordinary of the group is the Nureyev film. He’s seen dancing with Zizi Jeanmaire in "Le Jeune Homme et la Mort," portraying a young man in a Paris garret obsessed with a woman who turns out to be his nemesis. It was choreographed in 1946 by Roland Petit, and became a celebrated vehicle for the French dancer Jean Babilee.

This is the same ballet revived by American Ballet Theater this season for Mikhail Baryshnikov, but you’d never know it from the differences between the Baryshnikov and Nureyev interpretations, and the two corresponding stagings.

No matter how you slice it, the ballet itself is a pretty sleazy affair, a mixture of lurid Freudianisms and melodramatic sexploitation. Baryshnikov, with his instinctive taste, plays down the tawdriness of the role, and emphasizes instead the ferocious, coded-spring athleticism of the role, to which he adds a few technical flourishes of his own. But he’s unable to suppress the garishness of the ballet, and the ABT production, with its Parisian skyline, its colored electric lights and its deathmasks, only points up the vulgarity of it all.

Incredibly, Nureyev gives the part a chaste quality. He remains intensely sensual. But the purity of his look and movement precludes any trace of crassness. At this point in his career, Nureyev was at his most beautiful, physically, and as the slightly slowed motion of the film unmistakably reveals, his technique was pristine perfection in form and rhythm. He lifts the ballet above its own baseness, and turns the character's passion into an almost saintly compulsion. The film, shot in 1966 for French television, was directed by Petit himself. Not only is the camera deployed with the utmost sensitivity, but also everything about the production--the spare, whitish set, the simple, muted colors--accords with Nureyev's portrayal. From the vantage point of this film, therefore, the ABT version is a gross distortion. And without the film, there’d be no concrete witness to the contrast. Which is just a portion of the treasurable fallout from "Dance on Film."

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)