ABT 'Afternoon of a Faun' reviews 'Afternoon of a Faun' reviews ABT 'Gong' reviews ABT 'Rodeo' reviews Stiefel in reviews Kent in reviews recent ABT reviews more Aeron Kopriva reviews

Unfortunately, a gala also entails a solid train of latecomers in frou-frou dresses and black-tie menswear eclipsing everybody else’s sightlines. Others tend to pay social calls during each brief pause, and those who sit still are probably just hungry for dinner afterwards. For this reason, the program pushes off the single intermission for as long as possible to keep everybody situated. It took a good twenty minutes to wrangle them in slowly for de Mille’s closing work.

At this event, however, latecomers missed a fine performance in the company premiere of Jerome Robbins’ “Afternoon of a Faun,” set to Debussy’s famous prelude. The flutes’ descending notes, first down the chromatic scale and then up again, captures the rocking motion of midday reverie. The scrim lifts to reveal a translucent studio made of more scrims in Jean Rosenthal’s stage design, complete with cutouts for a skylight above and two large windows on their left. They may be letting in a soft northern light, but all we can see is the blackness of the wings and stage flies. The discrepancy has less to do with our willing suspension of disbelief than the dancer’s obliviousness to the world outside the studio. The dancers are absorbed in the theatrical fourth wall, usually reserved for the audience itself, but here, in a magical feat of stagecraft and Mr. Robbins’ artistic imagination, it represents the dancers' idea of the audience as they imagine themselves being watched in front of the large wall mirror. This, by the way, is the mirror game Robbins later enjoyed so much in “Glass Pieces” (pun intended? You bet.) as ordinary bystanders strolling across the plaza are suddenly transported (like Alice passing through the magical looking-glass) into a sublimated realm of pure-movement exercises where a quartet of dancers in metallic unitards romp like angels with loping sissonnes.

The personal biographies of the cast added extra pathos to this meditation on what it means to be a dancer. The earliest image of the ballet finds Ethan Stiefel prone on the rehearsal floor. Absent for most of last season due to injury, Mr. Stiefel lies there stretching one leg and rotating his ankle. Julie Kent’s performance inaugurates her 20th anniversary season with ABT.

By the time we see this piece, it is important to know that we are viewing a palimpsest of historical allusions: To Mallarme’s 1876 poem, Debussy’s orchestral work in 1894, and of course, Nijinsky’s groundbreaking ballet in 1912 that looked back to the archaic imagery of the poem as a Greek revival of modern primitivism. Whew! When Ethan Stiefel finally stands up and studies himself in the mirror, he exhibits the same attenuated profile of Nijinsky’s faun. As he turns, narrowly focused on a strong point in front of him, he wheels his arms as if trying to trick his reflection, again similar to the faun’s cunning as he first approaches on tiptoe the bathing nymphs. For Robbins, however, the dream-addled mirage is replaced by ballet’s elusive ideal of perfection. The choreography is really a tribute to the Achille’s tendon, and all the lineaments of the dancer’s body that comprise the classical pedagogy.

Mr. Stiefel and Ms. Kent are looking at themselves to be sure, but to say the piece is about the narcissism of dancers is not enough. Robbins treats this narcissism with intelligence and curiosity, uncovering layers of paradox. The dancers’ long looks, for example (especially Ms. Kent’s doe-eyes) betray not just fascination but critical scrutiny. They can be interpreted as appeals to us for acceptance, or sad acknowledgements of imperfection. The mood is not altogether sad, however, and one mistake is to simply say these dancers could be great lovers if they only got over themselves. There is a feeling that this scrutiny is so particular to dancers that it takes another to release one from the prison of self-consciousness. As they dance together (by this point, the strings are in full throttle) they fulfill Oscar Wilde’s adage that love is “mutual vanity.”

Moreover, Mallarmé’s poem is a pastoral allegory about the paradox of art and nature, the imaginary and the real, how the “visible serene artificial breath of inspiration (“Le visible et serein souffle artificiel de l'inspiration”) can “regain the sky” (“qui regagne le ciel”) itself, the very air we breathe and clouds we see. When performed correctly, Robbins’ work speaks to this complex theme in terms of ballet (as an ideal sylph-infested realm) and modern dance (earthbound naturalism) à la Nijinsky.

The excerpts from “The Howling Cat,” which shared the program with “Faun,” are by comparison smoke and mirrors. Out of plumes of stage fog, Paloma Herrera emerges in a tasseled black and red skirt in a suite called “Something Like a Tango.” The work certainly is like something, but it is not really anything in particular. She is supposed to be a black window, using her seductive charms to prey on men. As novelty, Ms. Herrera does communicate a severity in her phrasing, but its artistic merit rarely rises above a Las Vegas lounge act. A spicy fusion of tango and ballet performed to a selection of music by Astor Piazzolla, Jacob Gade, and Gary Chang, the choreography of “The Howling Cat,” (subtitled “Imaginary Tango”) is by Kirk Peterson, ballet master at ABT. He has already led nine lives as a dancer, choreographer, and important teacher, staging illustrious revivals of many classical ballets, even playing the character role of the evil puppeteer in last season’s “Petrouchka.” This work is minor in scope, satisfied with the fidgeting of sharp jazzy movements and lusting extensions to the dotted rhythms of the music. While the partnering can be intricate between Ms. Herrera and Jose Manuel Carreno, the work is too stylized for its own good, lacking the tango’s insouciant emotion and at the same time falling short on virtuosity. Mr. Peterson does show canny invention in the variants of the pas de chat, however. In a section called “Enragé,” four men high-step in place. In one memorable movement, Ms. Herrera forces her foot eye-level while the other leg kicks up behind her. Fetching stuff.

ABT also resumed Mark Morris’ commission for them, “Gong.” The choreography, as well as Colin McPhee’s score, is heavily indebted to Balinese culture, the rhythmic texture of gamelan and astute poses of Indonesian court dancing. The curtain lifts, releasing a rushing tide of percussion: Bells, gongs, brushes. Luckily, the title is the only flippant thing about this Morris work, unless you find, as I did this time around, a cynicism in his employment of balletic feats now that he’s working with a company of athletes. “Gong,” I confess, was my first exposure to Morris, and I loved it. But now I can’t ignore the cackling “Pretty isn’t pretty to me” rebuke he once gave regarding classical technique. I can’t help but see the meta-subject of the dance as Morris’ grudging disapproval of ballet, or overhear the fey impersonation of a gunslinger in a spaghetti Western (“So ya want ballet? I’ll give ya ballet!”). The women, for example, unsexed as usual, sport pancake tutus over their unitards in an array of fluorescent monochromes, while the men are really men, in sleeveless tops. Not to say this is at all insidious, merely prevalent. In fact, sometimes it can be beautiful. He indulges in the most noticeable difference between modern and ballet: pointe shoes. He has an ensemble of women step forward in viperfish relevé. He makes use of extended periods of silence so we can listen to the sound of satin on vinyl. The dancers slowly walk the heel to the furthest tip of the block at the end of their foot. Indeed, in the shadow wall sequence, a ballet vocabulary becomes totemic in size and significance. A thirty-foot man deeply plies. Mr. Morris displays his usual musical wit, which comes very naturally to him. Dancers kick in both directions or reproduce Giselle’s breezy ballotté steps, resembling here the iron tongue striking a bell. Other movements are vintage Morris: Men teeter like jacks, elbows protruded at right angles. The work remains a trenchant example of Morris’ clever ensemble work and his boundless knack for self-invention in various idioms. The faux-orientalism is successful most of the time, especially the motive of lotus-cupped port de bras.

Innocence was restored in Agnes de Mille’s landmark “Rodeo,” revived in celebration of the centenary of her birth. A comic character ballet in two scenes, separated by an honest-to-goodness hoedown, the work finished the evening with a hearth-warm tribute to American naturalism. The Russians from the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo on whom the ballet was first created had walked out of rehearsal, claiming that the simulated horse-riding wasn’t dance. “I never said it was,” she wrote later. “Rodeo” rides on the acting strength and comic timing of the leading cowgirl, played indelibly by Erica Cornejo, who dresses up as a cowboy to get closer to her heartthrob, the head wrangler, a staunch Isaac Stappas. In the first scene, “The Corral,” she pantomimes with hilarious abandon, lassoing with her whole body and bucking wildly as the ranch hands prove their manhood in a series of competitions involving roping, riding, branding and throwing.

The choreography is a mixture of folk idioms brought center stage for the first time: round dances, boot tap, and country line dances are the dominant thread, tied together in a Broadway theatrical style that favors simplicity and dramatic expression. Copeland’s frontier score conjures vast plains in his open-fifths, as well as an indoor hootenanny later that evening at the ranch house with spirited ragtime. Although the choreography is not very interesting in itself, the work gives a clue to de Mille’s underlying artistic principles. “All I know about dance composition,” she once wrote, “I learned from folk dances. These are trustworthy models because they are the residuum of what has worked; there is no folk dance extant that did not work.” The structure of “Rodeo” is a sonata form, with movements introduced in the hoedown and corral scene recapitulated in a slower melodic Andante section where the womenfolk walk beneath the cowhands’ arms in dreamy enchaînements. Craig Salstein was wonderful as the champion roper who steals Ms. Cornejo’s heart, introducing himself with an “ah-shucks” kick-ball-change (she girds herself resolutely) before launching into a magnificent boot tap routine originally performed by Fredrick Franklin. Jennifer Alexander, as the ranch owner’s daughter, gave the most elaborate come hither with wheeling arms echoed by a curl of her finger. De Mille’s witty blocking contrasts meaningfully the tugging social norms when a trousered Ms. Cornejo woodenly partners Mr. Salstein, while Mr. Stappas dances upstage with the Ms. Alexander in a flounced country dress.

Also on the program was the “Paquita pas de deux,” which marked Maxim Beloserkovsky and Irina Dvorovenko’s onstage reunion as real-life husband and wife. They greeted each other with dignified bows. Ms. Dvorovenko, back from maternity leave, moved with stately elegance to Minkus’ surging fanfare. She was in full command, embroidering her phrases with the whimsy and zest of a gypsy. She balanced imperturbably in shoulder-high kicks. In a delightful series of batting chassé steps, she folded her arms or placed them insolently on her hips. For his part, Mr. Beloserkovsky came alive. His leaps were solid, as if he were tempted to walk up an invisible flight of stairs. Although some of their partnering was spotty, the performance was more than compensated by the grand sight of seeing them dance publicly again.