I suppose one could rail against the weak program Diana Vishneva chose for "Beauty in Motion," her road show at City Center, but what good would it do? It doesn't present the Vishneva I'd like to see, as her classical gifts are wasted, or used for cheap -- really cheap -- effect. After all, that's been the arc of her career as I've observed it through years-apart snapshots from her New York visits. The sublimely Romantic Giselle of 1998 became the thrillingly saucy Rubies girl of 2002, then, in recent years, the scenery-chewing diva I've found intriguing and depressing in varying proportion, as she guested with American Ballet Theatre.

With her short torso, amazingly cantileverd Vaganova back, delicate arms, arrowhead feet and s-curving legs, Vishneva's an instrument of exquisite particularity. She describes lines in the air with a greater infinity of detail than merely excellent dancers. In this, she's in the company of my most-admired ballerinas (she carries her extra-long arms much like Wendy Whelan, who otherwise couldn't be more different). There's something both rococo and eye-trapping in her slightest movements, especially when set off against the soulful cast of her dark Russian eyes.

Would that Vishneva's taste were as exquisite as her port de bras. While I've come to enjoy the over-the-top passion of a Faroukh Ruzimatov, it's depressing to see Vishneva cheapen her sublime gift in the service of stylistic nostril-flaring. She's awfully good at delivering cheap thrills, but she can be greater.

I give Vishneva credit for using musicians from the Kirov for two of her program's three numbers, and for bringing along five terrific Kirov dancers. It's admirable that she commissioned all-new works for herself from the choreographers Alexei Ratmansky, Moses Pendleton and Dwight Rhoden, but I'd have enjoyed seeing the novelties offset with something familiar and classical, if only a Don Q pas, or even Forsythe's Vertiginous or In the Middle. The classical heart of the Ratmansky was lost in its surfeit of cutesiness (I'm beginning to realize he's pretty relentless when it comes to cute), Pendleton presented Vishneva as a Vegas lounge act, and Rhoden proved clueless about using ballet dancers.

There's nothing wrong with demystifying ballet's arcana for a wider audience, but Vishneva's charisma, the very thing that brings in her audience, doesn't derive from her bee-stung lips or ankles-behind-the-ears extensions. It's because, despite her lapses in taste, she's a great ballerina, and however charming it might be for her to take herself down from her pedestal, however tired she might be of wearing a tiara, she casts aside that glamor at her peril. The world is filled with Vegas acts and modern dancers manqués, but a true ballerina's as rare as she is precious. It's a lesson that other great Russian gracing our stages this month, Nina Ananiashvili, never forgets.

The role model for programs like Vishneva's is, of course, Rudolf Nureyev's series of tremendously successful "Nureyev and Friends." I won't belabor the obvious: that Nureyev didn't entirely abandon tradition, that Nureyev's "formula" has usually flopped when others have tried it (I remember Makarova's dismal attempt), and that, despite her gifts, Vishneva's no Nureyev. Perhaps it was as a nod to Nureyev, for whom Glen Tetley made an endless Pierrot Lunaire, that Ratmansky and Vishneva chose the Schoenberg for their collaboration. In the best of circumstances I'm not a fan of clowns, dancing or otherwise, and Ratmansky's decided to grace his ballet with not one, but four Pierrots: Vishneva, Igor Kolb, Mikhail Lobukhin and Alexander Sergeev. Perhaps, as in the movie Gremlins, someone made the mistake of feeding a lone Pierrot after midnight.

The men are in identical ensembles of white pants, shirts, clown hats and facial makeup. So's Vishneva at first, except for the makeup. The four combine and recombine in various combinations, as Vishneva soon sheds her clown pants and shirt for a little brown dress. As the dancers enact dramatic situations which appear to reflect the songs' lyrics, there's much manly leanings on manly shoulders, exaggeratedly happy, sad or just bemused faces, and a rather heavy-handed wit. The men haul about, lift, drag and otherwise partner Vishneva singly and severally. I feared the worst early on, when Vishneva patted the air in front of her like Marcel Marceau trapped in his invisible box, but Ratmansky does give his charges a fair amount of "real" dancing -- the only real ballet in the evening. Vishneva must've included in her contract with Ratmansky a stipulation that she gets to show off the sky-high kick of her right leg's forward grand battement, with her vertical leg almost hitting her collarbone. Each man has a solo, and each revealed clean and powerful technique among Ratmansky's off-kilter angularities, especially Kolb with a stunning series of turns in second, changing his spot by adding forty-five degrees to each pirouette. For her part, Vishneva showed off her afore-mentioned extensions and knack of firing off a double turn on pointe at the drop of a (pointy clown) hat. Perhaps if I found the Schoenberg less endlessly grating I might've gotten more out of Ratmansky's effort, but it seemed far, far less than the sum of its relentlessly clever parts.

Clever, too, was Moses Pendleton's F.L.O.W. (For Love of Women). Clever, and pointless. As has been Pendleton's wont since his earliest days with Pilobolus, each of F.L.O.W's three sections used props whose degree of gimmickry might best be left as an exercise for the reader. In the first section, Vishneva and fellow Kirov dancers Maria Shevyakova and Ekaterina Ivannikova were entirely hidden, with only their arms, legs, hands and feet visible, glowing in the dark via the miracle of ultraviolet lighting. There were magical moments, as Vishneva et. al. created flying birds, disembodied lips, even a caricature of a ballerina. It was clever in the way a good lounge act might be clever: self-contained, witty, and ultimately about nothing more than its own spectacle. The middle part was more of the same, but also could've been a biting commentary on the evening's artistic merits, had Pendleton the artistic cojones. In a skin-tight, glistening unitard which presented Vishneva in a kind of nudity enhanced over the real thing, she stretched and slid along a mirror angled so that we could simultaneously admire the "real" Vishneva and her reflection. For all of Pendleton's clever effects -- he plays a lot with having Vishneva and her reflection create processions of geometric shapes out crooked ankles and knees -- the abiding imagery was more pernicious, and lascivious: rolling about on the mirror, Vishneva became a modern-day "Narcissa," not just admiring but making slow, languorous love to her own reflection. Was this Pendleton's comment on Vishneva's vanity? I can't imagine so, yet I can't imagine nobody involved in this work's gestation not noticing what's going on here. Or maybe I just have a filthier mind than most choreographers. That in the final section, Pendleton presented Vishneva as a modern-day, spinning Loie Fuller using centrifugal force to bring a garment of netting to life was an a bit anticlimactic, if happily orgasm-free.

On paper, it might've seemed a good idea to put together two gifted, charismatic dancers like Vishneva and the great modern dancer, Desmond Richardson. In the right hands, it might still be, but these are not Dwight Rhoden's. In Three Point Turn Rhoden seems truly clueless at how to use ballet dancers, beyond the most basic poses, and he's not all that good at using Richardson, either. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen Richardson in a truly good piece of choreography; it's to his credit he can make mediocre work look brilliant, and awful work, mediocre. Beyond his impressive musculature and physical presence, Richardson's a mover of tremendous refinement and granularity, presenting Rhoden's not-very-interesting twitches, contractions and contortions with a clarity that brought to mind fractals, those bizarre mathematical shapes in which every detail is a copy of the whole, writ in ever-finer measure. When Richardson and the two Russian men echoed the same steps, the Russians seemed oddly vague and vaporous. Vishneva brings mathematics to mind, too, but her shape's more a hyperbolic curve, asymptotically stretching into space, towards a point that can never actually be reached. All those stretchy battements, grand ports de bras, whirling leaps and turns shoot out from her like rays from a nova. Vishneva's universe lies outside herself; Richardson's within himself. It could have been a fascinating contrast, but Rhoden shows us little more than, "Look at Vishneva kick, and look at Richardson contract." Three Point Turn's final moment, with the two trading what might've been a steamy kiss, had the work earned such a climax.

For the first time in years, I didn't bother bringing my binoculars to the theater, as they seemed hardly necessary for my orchestra seat. And yet, they were, as I spent much of Three Point Turn watching the bare-legged Vishneva in her leotard, and trying, and failing, to discern the tattoo on her hip. Glamor sure isn't what it used to be.

The dancers, of course, are wonderfully talented and that's what to me was so annoying - I thought the talent utterly wasted on this program. Every trick of the trade (think circus) was brought out; my leg goes even higher than you thought it could - I can stretch even more than I thought I could. Look, ma, no hands!

The screeching in German was almost beyond my endurance. The percussion in the final work almost drove me from my seat. The empty banality of it all made me close my eyes for long periods of time, only to open them and find I had missed nothing. I literally couldn't wait to leave - only the problem of having to disturb a whole row of people kept me in my seat.

I had really looked forward to seeing this ballerina of whom I had only read glowing accounts, and then to see her not only without her tiara, barelegged, her leg closer and closer to her ear, dancing without meaning (to me), was a tremendous disappointment. Two hundred dollars worth of tickets, plus the hotel, gas (petrol), food, etc., which I am more than willing to invest to see a performance, but I am not willing to waste it.

Aren't you glad I didn't write a review?

Maybe this illustrius ballerina will return and treat us to the glories which surround her name - but this time before I buy a ticket the program will have to be about a recognizable ballet such as Giselle, Swan Lake, etc., otherwise I won't trust her taste again.

Maybe you should've written a review, Anjuli, as you bring up a very good point, that Vishneva's performing this thing in places where most ballet fans would NOT have had a chance to see her in classical roles. I'd certainly have felt a little gypped.