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Since the Benjamin Harkarvy days of the Seventies, the company has suffered some artistic ups and downs, and, while any day one can go to the theater and see Serenade is a pretty good day, I was unsure what to expect when the curtain rose at City Center. I knew the company's reputation had been growing under Roy Kaiser's direction, and that it had acquired some very well-regarded dancers and choreography, but I hadn't seen the company itself since those long ago days at BAM.

I've become so used to visiting regional companies performing to canned music, I was happily surprised to hear the real, live tones, however melancholy, of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings emanating from the orchestra pit, as Pennsylvania Ballet had brought to New York, not only its forty-some dancers, but its own orchestra, performing quite lyrically under the baton of their Music Director, Beatrice Jona Affron.

The curtain then rose on what proved to be a reverent, sweet and gently poetic Serenade, as staged by Sandra Jennings, a City Ballet corps dancer from the Seventies. In recent years on the large stage of the New York State Theater, Serenade's often performed in a thrilling, almost hallucinatory rush, with an attack that sometimes speaks as much of Peter Martins' taste for dance as athletics as it does Balanchine's fleetness of foot.

In the friendlier confines of City Center, with less ground to cover, the Pennsylvania dancers seemed more attuned to the careful positioning of their arms and torsoes than to alacritous leaping, and one of my strongest impressions of this lyrical performance was the softness with which the dancers sank into and rose out of Balanchine's many poses on the stage's floor, all the while making traceries out of their port de bras with a delicacy that made me see Serenade as a daughter of Les Sylphides. Most important of all, though, was this was a performance that breathed. Phrases were spun out with the miraculous legato which is at the heart of Balanchine's allegros, and the entire corps conspired in making this Serenade a particularly shimmering, perfumed dream, or rather, ritual. I could see why some old-timers still bemoan the intimacy certain ballets lost when City Ballet left City Center for Lincoln Center in the Sixties here Serenade seemed much more a shared event; certainly I felt myself participating mightily into the ballet's surreal drama, the always different story of the Waltz Girl's joy and despair, or the Dark Angel's heartless mystery.

While I'm used to seeing different physical types in each of Serenade's leads, that is, a tall Dark Angel, a short Russian Girl, at this performance all three leads were danced by women with striking similar appearences. Julie Diana, Amy Aldredge and Aranxta Ochoa are all long-limbed, short-torsoed brunettes of medium height, and for awhile I found myself wondering "Why is the Waltz Girl doing the Russian Girl's part?" After awhile I began to sort things out in my head (a lot of Serenade really takes place in your head) I rather enjoyed the idea that all three leads are just aspects of a single woman, especially when the three let down their long, black tresses and seemed almost indistinguishable as they danced together with James Ady.

I'd read of Julie Diana from afar during her years with San Francisco and Pennsylvania Ballets, but this was my first real look at her. I liked the hints of character she brought to her Waltz Girl. In the Waltz she'd bourree playfully away from the darkly handsome Sergio Torrado, then fling herself into his arms with the abandon of adolescent love. Later, she and James Ady timed the moment to perfection when he grabs her and spins her about horizontally as she falls limp and he lowers her to the stage it had the effect of seeing a bird struck down by an arrow in mid-flight. Amy Aldridge's Russian Girl was also birdlike, perhaps an eagle in a role more often danced by hummingbirds. I liked the flashing of her feet in her big, petite allegro leaps, but there were times she seemed to be tightening up in her shoulders every-so slightly, as she spread her arms at their widest in a few particularly fast sections. She and Ady were very careful of the Russian Girl's upside down leap onto his hip it seemed to pass in dignified slow-motion compared to City Ballet's death-defying leap.

If the lead women were all ravishing brunettes, the four demi girls were a shining assortment of hues, especially the stunningly redheaded and serene Abigail Mentzer and the emphatically blonde, equally stunning Barette Vance. The costumes were credited as being "after Karinska," and rather far after, as she'd never have stood for the oddly bunched, elasticized waists of the women's otherwise appropriately billowing blue skirts.

After the intermission, there was a wonderful recital of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana presented by the ballet's orchestra augmented by the New York Choral Society, and quite thrilling it was too in that intimate, shallow house. Unfortunately, time and again the concert was nearly ruined by some distracting nonsense which kept on taking over the stage. OK, I'm being more than a little snarky here, but if we can pay farmers not to grow soybeans, perhaps we can also pay choreographers not to do Carmina Burana? Over the years, many choreographers have been seduced by Orff's thundering, erotic rhythms and racy Latin text. I've seen lots of Carmina Burana ballets and they're always, always terrible. Neenan eschewed the obvious clichés of the soft-core romps for defrocked monks and deshabille nuns that have been done to death, but instead came up with his own sillinesses, as dancers in various odd fantastical costumes by Oana Botez-Ban (outer-space fairies? punk bridesmaids from the sewers?) gyred and gimbaled about the stage (and about a silvery, concave tent of a construction by Mimi Lien) with tremendous energy and little rhyme or reason. I rather enjoyed the dancers, particularly Diana again, as the ever-popular Girl-in-the-Shiny-Unitard-Who-Gets-Draped-Lasciviously-Over-Two-Guys-and-Dragged-About-on-the-Floor-A-Lot (that's not actually from the program notes).

I'm looking forward very much to seeing the season's second program this Sunday. It's starting out with Diana in Concerto Barocco.