American Ballet Theatre's Spring Gala on May 19 was not as glamorous or as stellar as in recent memory, but it did give a good look at the company's current state (for better or worse), and a charming glimpse of its past days of glory, as, rather than import stars from elsewhere, it brought them from its own past for a charming piece d'occasion.

First up was a glimpse of what might be the company's future, in the presence of Joseph Phillips, leading Craig Salstein and Jared Matthews in the Pontevedrian dances from Ronald Hynd's The Merry Widow. Of course there is no Pontevedria, and generations of choreographers have had fun creating satiric pastiches of mittel-European folk dances. Hynd's no exception. Desmond Heely's costumes for ABT's male and female ensembles are dazzling confluences of bells, boots and bangles, not to mention ribbons, embroidery, and handkerchiefs for miles.

Apparently part of the glorious Pontevedrian tradition, as envisioned by Hynd, requires that the male ensemble bound as one into double tours en l'air, then land on one knee while enthusiastically slapping out a tattoo on the frontmost of their shiny scarlet boots, all in time to Franz Lehar's comically overbaked faux-folk score. The women, in luxuriantly appointed skirts and also scarlet boots, sway delicately when not joining the men in enthusiastic stampings of their heels, and the waving of those doubtless-symbolic hankies. It's one step up from Monty Python's inimitable fish-slapping dance, as Hynd concocts one happy absurdity after another, rendered almost believable by his meticulous detailing and the dancers' panache.

Phillips, a flashy virtuoso who's migrated from San Francisco Ballet to Miami City Ballet to ABT, delivered flashy trick after flashy trick -- big half-turning leaps into splits, and endless turns, kicks and pirouettes, with Matthews and Salstein following suit, though at a respectful distance. It's not usual for an artistic director to put a member of the corps ahead of two soloists, as Kevin McKenzie's done here. I can only assume he decided to show off the latest toy in his box of virtuoso male action figures. This casting's a vote of confidence in Phillips' future, yet also a nod to his past and future: he's weak at partnering, and this role requires none.

As Hanna Glawari, the glamorous, eponymous widow, the equally glamorous Paloma Herrera, in glorious black embroidery and lace, gave what proved to be among the evening's finest performances, assured, happy and confident in Hynd's conventional, painless solo. When Herrera's present in spirit as well as body, she's a delight, with a sweetness that belies her occasional, unfortunate stolidity. She smiled with a genuine pleasure that matched her flawless technique and always perfect feet. Hynd's solo was forgettable; Herrera wasn't.

Next, on a grimly austere stage, David Hallberg brought us the purple-boots Von Rothbart solo from McKenzie's ill-conceived Swan Lake, in which the sorcerer enthralls the ballet's four suitor-princesses with the puissance of his smirk and elongé line as amplified by those purple thigh-highs. Accoutering Hallberg to emphasize the majesty of his sinuous legs, and giving him ample leaps with which to unfurl those beauties is never a bad thing, and I'd happily pay to watch him repeat sissonne-failli-assemblésissonne a few dozen times. Unfortunately, as taken out of context, this solo was little more interesting than those classroom steps, despite the bombast of Tchaikovsky's purloined Russian Dance and Hallberg's stab at haughty evil. The solo's Big Moment comes when Von Rothbart assumes a long balance in arabesque on demi pointe, which Hallberg never quite got, and had to finesse with an "I-meant-to-do-that" rolling through the position. If we're delving into the repertory, why not have Hallberg confront the gala's audience of capitalist pigs, I mean generous donors, with his powerful, scary rendition of Death from The Green Table? I know they won't be doing The Green Table this year, but still, it would've been nose-tweaking, naughty fun while showing there's more to Hallberg than his gams.

I wished Jessica Lang's Splendid Isolation III, for ABT's ever-popular duo of Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky had indeed been performed in isolation, but, alas, there it was. To the cheerful strains of Mahler's ubiquitous "Adagietto," the curtain rose on Beloserkovsky, in glorious, muscular nudity save for blindingly white short-shorts flopping about the stage at a respectful distance from Dvorovenko at center stage in a similarly dazzling white dress and long, long skirt which bellowed at her feet to cover much of the Met's stage in a huge circle. At first I thought it a commentary on the many women in the gala audience who'd worn dresses with long trains, without a clue as to the proper way to handle them in the close quarters of the Met's crowded lobby and aisles. Then I thought of it as a commentary on Balanchine's Variations Pour Une Porte et Un Soupir, but to prettier music. It was neither, but after Beloserkovsky freed Dvorovenko from her skirts confines and the duet heaved itself along a predictable path to a predictable final pose, I had occasion to observe that if I were a choreographer myself, I'd probably come up with something just as dull, and also that the extraordinarily thin Dvorovenko in her shining white leotard, and Beloserkovsky in those tighty-whities, would've made terrific underwear models. They can dance, too, I've heard.

Following Hallberg in the Quest for the Elusive Balance, Gillian Murphy and Ethan Stiefel breezed fitfully through the adagio and coda of the ever-familiar wedding pas de deux from Don Quixote. Stiefel's verve and bravura almost made up for Murphy's oddly flat portrayal. Twice she hesitantly removed her hand from Stiefel's in a bid for a Big Balance, and twice she almost nailed it, in unhappy, wobbly attitudes. In her second, she actually stayed up a respectable length of time, but with such agita in her back, working leg it would've been better artistically if she'd done a simple roll through the position. In the coda, Murphy redeemed herself a bit with a nice, clean sequence of single-single-double fouettes, while Stiefel's dash and really clean pirouttes in second helped power this erratic performance to an enthusiastic finale. Overall, it looked as if Murphy, who usually shines in bravura pas de deux, had misplaced her attention and focus somewhere between dressing room and stage.

I'd managed to miss Diana Vishneva's Dying Swan during the Kirov's recent City Center visit, having to make do with Lopatkina instead. At last my chance had come, and Vishneva didn't disappoint, flaunting her extraordinary pencil-thin instrument of a body, extraordinary focus, magical, liquid arms and vanished restraint. Vishneva's arms didn't flap, they FLAPPED, and as she squeezed every last drop of bathos from every bourree, tilt of her torso or stretch on the stage floor, her swan looked to have expired from working it to death. Add a gentle rain of molting feathers from her tutu, and she'd be frighteningly close to the Ballet Trockadero's drag-queen parody. Vishneva's swanniness outlasted the poor bird's demise, as she took her bows in exquisite, interminable character. When an attendant approached her with a pair of giant bouquets, I half-expected her to shoot up from her bow and recoil from the man as if he were Siegfried wielding his crossbow.

After the intermission's usual star and gown-watching came ABT's first performance in fifty years of Antony Tudor's caustic vignette from 1938, Judgment of Paris, a preview of ABT's fall season, with its tribute to Tudor. It was sadly appropriate that ABT dedicated this performance to the memory of the late Sallie Wilson, the greatest proponent in Tudor's later years of the emotionally tormented heroine from his Pillar of Fire, and after his death the most authoritative stager of his ballets. Along with Diana Byer, Wilson staged this production. In classical mythology, Paris, a mortal, was tasked with choosing the fairest of the goddesses Juno, Venus and Minerva. In Tudor's version, Paris is a drunken playboy in a seedy cafe choosing among three bored, aging prostitutes for a night of dubious pleasure. In this tawdry mise in scène the ballet exudes Tudor's cynicism like a whore's cheap perfume. He's equally cruel to the hookers, their would-be john, and the procurator of a waiter.

For the gala, the client was ABT's artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, dapper and tuxedoed, and Victor Barbee, still a character dancer with the company, was the unctuous waiter. Of the "goddesses," Juno was danced by the former ABT principal Kathleen Moore, Venus by the company's always divine star of the Seventies and Eighties, Martine van Hamel, and Minerva by former soloist Bonnie Mathis. Their dresses, originally designed by Hugh Laing, are heavily padded around the hips and derriere, augmenting the "godesses'" air of ancient decrepitude. It's a perfect touch that the whole tawdry enterprise is accompanied by familiar tunes by Kurt Weill. Looking a bit too fit and chipper for her part, Kathleen Moore danced a sad little Spanish number as Juno, striking a few desultory poses, hiding then coyly revealing her crotch to McKenzie while shaking her finger at him with mock disapproval, then beckoning offstage, as if to will him to accompany her. As Venus, Martine van Hamel, in a gleaming blonde wig and enough makeup for the Rockettes, flirted with McKenzie while stumbling through a few brilliantly unimpressive tricks with three small hoops. Even with the fright wig and unflatteringly padded costume, Van Hamel looked terrifically fit, as if she might vanish into the wings and emerge once again as her unforgettable Myrtha. Amusing herself with a faded feather boa, Bonnie Mathis's Minerva was also a study in apathy, attending to McKenzie with mechanical enthusiasm. I'll leave it to viewers to discover this drunken Paris' choice, and the dance's sadly inevitable conclusion. While this was a charming performance, and a welcome look at some favorite dancers of days gone by, it pulled Tudor's punches. As performed recently by Diana Byer's own New York Theatre Ballet (where Wilson taught for decades), the "goddesses" were as comical, but with fangs behind their smiles.

The artistic high point of the gala was Nina Ananiashvili's appearance with Angel Corella in an excerpt from the second act of Giselle, from the Wilis capture of Albrecht, through their duet which begins with Myrtha's command that Giselle dance, luring Albrecht away from the safety of Giselle's grave, and their following solos. It's been a long time since I've seen Ananiashvili dance Giselle, and her return was a welcome demonstration of what separates a ballerina from a merely great dancer. Dancing at exquisitely slow tempi, Ananiashvili was in complete command of herself, and every aspect of her character. In addition to her still-formidable technique, she's got tremendous stage smarts: through subtle and overt phrasing, she directs your eye to just what she wants you to see, and she chooses those focal points with the canniness of a master storyteller, or a connoisseur's appreciation of a role's finer points. Her arms and legs described their aerial paths with the clarity of a calligrapher's pen, and she made delicate little dramas of what would for most dancers be commonplace, like the careful return to earth of her front foot when she's lifted by Corella. For Ananiashvili, this piqué landing's an event, and she makes sure you see it as such.

If at times her hops into sauté arabesques lacked the height to let her cleanly point her supporting foot, elsewhere, in Giselle's big hopping soubresauts and her flying jetés into the wings, she leaped as strongly as ever. For his part, Corella danced with impressive technique and passion, dropping so strongly to the stage at the end of his solo that he looked to have knocked himself out, or at least loosened some teeth. He partnered Ananiashvili with respectful attention, although, at least in this excerpt, little dramatic connection.

After Ananiashvili's excursion into the sublime, it was back to the land of bravura, as Herman Cornejo bounded with great gusto through Conrad's solo from the second act of ABT's version of Le Corsaire. A diminutive wonder, Cornejo pulled off his technical tricks with happy clarity -- he seldom lets his showmanship obscure the beautiful clarity of his technique, especially his wonderfully soft landings. Still in the land of the corsaire, Xiomara Reyes and José Manuel Carreño essayed that ballet's familiar showy pas de deux (why they didn't just have Cornejo join in the festivities, as he would've in the complete production, dancing Conrad's solo in its usual place, is a mystery to me). With his awesome technique and physique, Carreño had the power and authority onstage I found so lacking in the Kirov's men at their recent visit. Like Ananiashvili, Carreño knows he's there to make an impression, and with his bronzed chest and easy panache, he did just that. Reyes, too, made her impressions, but less fortunately. Looking, as she often does, like a decent soloist in over her head, the tiny, sparrow-like Reyes was devoid of flavor in her adagio with Carreño, and technically challenged where she shouldn't have been, falling out of turns in her solos and managing fast but unexceptional single fouettes in her coda. Showing you truly can't fool all of the people all of the time, she and Carreño received sparse applause at their bows after the adagio, which died entirely after Carreño ran into the wings. Perhaps he thought he was being gallant leaving the stage to Reyes, but the poor thing had to walk offstage alone in embarrassing silence, a few steps which seemed to take Reyes a painful eternity.

I've found it's never a good idea to underestimate Juliet Kent; in the final pas de deux between Tatiana and Onegin from John Cranko's Eugene Onegin, she was dramatically riveting, taking us for a wild ride on an emotional rollercoaster as Tatiana rejects Onegin, though still (of course) loving him. Cranko's duet is filled with his signature acrobatic lifts which emphasize its emotional peaks and valleys, delivered to scenery chewing perfection by Kent and the wondrously aggrieved Marcelo Gomes as the unfortunate Onegin. Even at the curtain calls, he maintained his character's ardor for Kent's, bending low to kiss her hand and gazing up at her with eyes that still burned with infatuation.

It might've once seemed a good idea to conclude the gala with the pounding finales of Harald Lander's Etudes, as ABT does a fine job with the ballet's often brutal technical demands. But after the Kirov's picture-perfect Etudes last month, ABT's version seemed unfortunately manqué, as ABT's corps can't quite match the Kirov's awesome unity of style and timing. In an unhappy and, I hope, temporary return to her form of previous years, Michele Wiles seldom nailed her solos' harder steps, too often fudging a badly finished pirouette or unfortunate balance. Like a dancing Cheshire Cat, her smile broadened as her technique faded. I looked at the tall, blonde Wiles and couldn't help thinking "Somova manqué," which is crueler than she usually deserves. Sascha Radetsky, a fine soloist who's recently shed his "boy-next-door" persona for a sterner demeanor and buffed physique, scowled his way through the difficult batterie of his solo; even his feet seemed to frown. While Corella surged across the stage and flashed his electric smile, his brilliance was less polished than I remember from a few years ago. While this uneven Etudes built to an appropriately rousing climax, it showed off ABT in a light that, like the gala itself, was more exposing of the company's current weaknesses than it would probably have wanted.

Ananiashvili, Beloserkovsky, Carreno, Corella, Cornejo, Dvorovenko, Gomes, Hallberg, Herrerra, Kent, Mathis, Matthews, McKenzie, Moore, Murphy, Phillps, Radetsky, Reyes, Salstein, Stiefel, Van Hamel, Vishneva, Wiles