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Although Ben Shahn's witty backdrops suggest an urban jungle as much as the boisterous bits remind us that Robbins would soon immortalize the Jets' and Sharks' street-fights, there are no rumbles or switchblades in 'Opus: Jazz.' Nevertheless, Robbins makes it clear that for these proto-hipsters, the world can be a dangerous place. For all these kiddies' alienated posing (I won't be the first to observe that Robbins seems to have borrowed Anna Sokolow's confrontational blank-stare at the audience), their enemy lurks within: their own sexuality. Given what we've learned in recent biographies about Robbins' tortured experience of his own bisexuality, it's hard to avoid dime-store psychologizing and say, "Aha! Robbins was really making a ballet about himself!" Although a trite truism (what work of art isn't, in some way, about its creator?), this observation does cast elements of 'Opus: Jazz' in an intriguing light, especially when pondering what Robbins found noteworthy in this late-Fifties subculture, and why.

In 'Jazz's' first section, "Entrance: Group Dance," Robbins introduces a contrast which shows up again and again, the affectlessness which these kids maintain or try to despite dense, high-voltage dancing. To Shahn's backdrop of a maze of television antennae and Robert Prince's unabashedly jazzy score, Robbins shows us these kids coalescing into a community of playful coolness. They drift onstage individually, some walking, others running, to stop and stare blankly out at us, in the audience (it's very much like the mirror-gazing Robbins would later devise for 'Afternoon of a Faun,' except here there's no mirror), as if challenging our own reasons for being there, and saying, "Keep out!"

Having set themselves up as a group apart from us, they coalesce into a community of their own, the boys facing the girls in a sort of ultra-detached line dance. They clump together, hold hands and make daisy chains, like they're doing grown-up playground games together good, clean, jazzy fun. The repeated finger-snapping, hips-akimbo postures might seem provocative, except they're utterly dead-pan. What could be cooler than the archetypical hipster pose they strike again and again while pacing the stage with their elbows glued to their sides, forearms pointing straight ahead and hands drooping limply from their wrists, as if actually doing something with their hands might be too uncool for words?
 

Perhaps showing why these kids feel the need to keep cool, the temperature in the next section, "Statics," turns powerfully, and uncomfortably, hot. The muscular, raw-boned Seth Orza, resplendent in a crimson sweater and sneakers, leads two other boys in almost calisthenic contortions on what appears to be, according to Shahn's backdrop, a tenement rooftop. Rebecca Krohn arrives, insinuating herself into the men's dancing, and Robbins plays a riff on the recurrent theme of disaffection versus sexuality. Krohn hops and wriggles and at times seems almost to be invoking the mens' passions like Madge infusing her potion with evil but all the while with a blank face. She's playing with fire and enjoys it, picking Orza from the three at random for an athletic duet which suggests a sexual clinch, after which they both collapse to spring quickly back up. More men join the revels, then coalesce around Krohn to toss her into the wings.

With Krohn, it was hard to tell whether this was playful rough-housing, or something uglier. When Georgina Pazcoguin, a dark, petite dancer who attacks this ballet with an almost-frantic energy, took over the role on May 5, the undertones became clearer she struggled more in Orza's grasp, and afterwards, ran about the stage as if trying to escape, before turning at downstage center to confront the men facing her, as she was backed up into the edge of the stage, which also became the end of the roof, and rather than playful, her flight offstage seemed indeed deadly. Is Robbins here saying that sex equals death? Certainly it paints "Statics'" protagonists in a very different light from those of 'Opus: Jazz's' other sections; perhaps that's why I had such difficulty, at first, seeing the sexual violence here, as it seems so at odds with the rest of the ballet's asexuality.

In "Improvisations," the backdrop changes to a city playground, or, rather, a towering wall with painted divisions for games of handball. Again, the gang's all here, trading solos and group bits with a lightness that's totally different from "Statics'" shadier energy. Perhaps as a thematic contrast to "Statics," here when the going threatens to become sexual, as when a couple face each other and trade a curious hand-pumping gesture perhaps meant to stand in for more overt pelvis-thrusting (as opposed to wiggling tushes, of which there are plenty, and damn fine ones, I might add), the other dancers quickly put a stop to it, calling the offenders off ("Uh uh," they yell, or "Hey!"), and separating them. In other Robbins revivals from this era (like the recent 'Interplay' or 'Moves') the company sometimes seems stilted, as if reconstructing dances from a manuscript excavated from a historical dig. Perhaps thanks to 'Opus: Jazz's' staging by Edward Verso, an original member of Robbins' Ballets: USA, the City Ballet ensemble flew through the sometimes tricky jazz moves as if they'd been born to them.

In "Passage for Two," the achingly beautiful Rachel Rutherford and sadly under-utilized Craig Hall pace slowly towards each other, to Prince's suddenly quiet score, which sounds like a jazz trumpeter practicing under a distant streetlight. As with Robbins' later 'Afternoon of a Faun,' here are two people dancing together without actually being together. Hall faces Rutherford, placing a hand on her hip. She acquiesces. Hall slowly lowers his face to her chest; she bends backwards, letting him rest his head there, but hardly encouraging or indicating any sensual interest in this pose, which in other circumstances would be powerfully titillating. Hall takes a step; Rutherford places her foot next to his, as if she's incapable of creating any movement not initiated by Hall. Eventually she leans backwards, resting her neck on his outstretched arm. He lifts her to a graceful pose on his back. They crouch together and wrap their arms around each other in an impassive embrace that nevertheless has a touch of desperation. They stand, and pace off into opposite corners. It's as if these two had absorbed the lesson of "Statics," and are avoiding danger by seeking a passionless intimacy.

Shahn's backdrop hints of a stained-glass window for "Theme, Variations and Fugue." The ensemble rushes in from all sides, joining in a happily laughing mass, now all dressed in white tops and sneakers, as if they've arrived at some peaceful conclusion far removed from their previous gritty, oppressive environs (rather as in the coda to 'West Side Story'). As Prince's score moves through the titular compositions, Robbins takes jazzy themes from earlier sections and restates them in a more-formal structure. The City Ballet ensemble dances with a infectious joy and warmth here, a happiness far removed, it seems from the dangers of too-hot and too-cold sexuality Robbins has just shown us. Although 'New York Export: Opus Jazz' creates a powerful sense of early television-age energy and anomie, it's more than simply a period piece. It creates such a sense of these teenagers' society that I found myself wondering at the long, strange trip these disaffected but game teenagers of the Fifties would be facing, and how they might now remember it from their retirement homes.

As for the rest of the program, it began with Peter Martins' 'Chichester Psalms' of last year, set to Leonard Bernstein's choral work of the same name. This is a massive work in which the huge Julliard Choral Union amateur chorus joins a large corps of dancers on a raised, concave dais. Catherine Barinas has dressed the women in vaguely Biblical flowing white gowns, and the men in much the same, only with semi-bared chests, and all in black. Martins hews to a simplified movement palette here: one of the beatific Carla Körbes' many entrances has her crisscrossing the stage with step, step, pique arabesque, step, step, pique arabesque, repeated infinitely, it seems. While I admire the courage of Martins' conviction not to shrink from perhaps over-utilizing such a basic classroom step, sometimes it's discernment, not discretion that's the better part of valor. With all the kneeling, praying and long, long stretches of ever so earnest, yet dreary, unison, 'Chichester Psalms' has the look of a senior project from Liturgical Dance 101, or perhaps an outtake from a long-lost Cecil de Mille biblical epic. Apart from some iffy moments from the boy soloist, the chorus sounded divine, and once again you could follow Balanchine's dictum of closing your eyes and enjoying the music. Or, in this case, you could just squint a bit at the endless combinations of black and white torsos, and imagine the State Theater stage had been taken over by a giant mutated piano keyboard.

Joaquin de Luz again pulled out all the stops in a manic 'Tarantella,' with the always game Megan Fairchild seeming a bit washed out in comparison. Fairchild's a strong and solid dancer, but, though she's loosened up considerably, she simply doesn't seem to have bravura in her bloodstream. I suppose the cannier Ashley Bouder can't dance all the hard roles, all the time, but I'd still love to see her go head-to-head with the irrepressible de Luz at least once at the State Theater.

The program concluded with yet another 'Stars and Stripes.' I am wondering if along with the Red Shoes there's such a thing as the Red Baton, and if perhaps Maurice Kaplow is inheriting it from the soon-to-be-departed Andrea Quinn. Again, Kaplow led an alarmingly fast 'Stars.' The first two "campaigns," all girls, led by the delightful blonde sparrow, Sterling Hyltin, and the somewhat gamier Dana Hanson who seems to have misplaced her grand jete both struggled in places to keep up with Kaplow's relentless baton. I felt like personally saluting the boys' campaign: this crop of a dozen fairly new kids seemed to thrive on rapidity, especially as led the indefatigable sparkplug of Daniel Ulbricht. I find few things in ballet more rousing than a really crisp, airborne performance of this "Thunder and Gladiator" campaign. I marvel at Balanchine's clever structure, and how he works ever-larger formations of men in brilliant counterpoint to Sousa's rhythms, as in where he has five men leap into half-turning backwards cabrioles, one pair, then another, then the final man beating their legs on successive beats, just where you'd imagine Sousa would've wanted it. The four successive double-tours from the ensemble went off without a hitch (Balanchine was always very clever about carefully rationing unison).

In the pas de deux to Liberty Bell and El Capitan, Sofiane Sylve again displayed her awe-inspiring technique, tossing off successive double pirouettes on each foot and multiple fouettés as if they were nothing. Stephen Hanna, making his New York debut in this role, proved a strong and spirited partner for Sylve, and threw himself into his solos with surprising brio, amusing the audience by pulling his long legs up, froglike, into bounding Cechetti changements, and hurling himself through some impressive turns in second.

In all, it was an interesting program, especially the contrast between two all-American archetypes: Balanchine's cheerleaders and Robbins' hipsters.