November 11-17, 2004

dance

Post-Show Glow

by Janet Anderson

Still basking in the afterglow of last spring's Swan Lake triumph, a visibly energized Pennsylvania Ballet opened its fall season, as is traditional, with an all-George Balanchine program. PAB showed off a newly acquired Balanchine ballet plus new principal dancer Julie Diana, here from San Francisco Ballet's ranks.

And hello, Ms. Diana! This pocket-sized siren mopped up the stage as the Strip Tease Girl in Balanchine's first major, and most enduring, Broadway effort, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. Diana has stage poise and technique but, even better, radiates personality. She was dynamite with Philip Colucci, who is one of PAB's best male dancers, but also a short guy who needs a tiny ballerina as a partner. Now he's got one. And as the Hoofer, Colucci performed his own star turn, effortlessly switching between tap rhythms and ballet leaps, while his character lapped up the Strip Tease Girl's vamping. On the big Academy stage, the 1936 piece looked sassy and fresh, all credit going to the performers, as this mobster-era nonsense can look dated.

Ballo della Regina was PAB's debut of a late (1978) Balanchine work. Balanchine created Ballo to showcase ballerina Merrill Ashley's bravura technique, and Ashley herself coached PAB's production. Amy Aldridge, dancing the lead, was outstanding; her clean attack and sharp body line resemble Ashley's, and she whipped through Ballo's intricate footwork and tricky little turns. Her partner, Zachary Hench, who arrived last spring from San Francisco Ballet's principal ranks, is a more lyric dancer, and his buoyancy nicely counterpointed Aldridge's razor-sharp edges. This pretty piece isn't one of Balanchine's masterpieces, although the company performed as though it was.

Agon, however, is a masterpiece, one of the greatest of the Balanchine-Stravinsky collaborations that permanently changed theatrical dance. It's a wickedly difficult combination of very precise ballet steps, flat-footed turns and sudden upward jumps. The dancers become abstractions. The interweaving arms and legs are as radically restructured and discordant as the musical accompaniment. (The piece has formal links to baroque musical structure, but the 17th century would have burnt Balanchine and Stravinsky at the stake for this.) Everyone danced beautifully, with highest honors going to Arantxa Ochoa and Meredith Rainey dancing the famous, near-contortionist pas de deux. Ochoa's flawless Balanchine skills enabled her to make all the elongated leg extensions and body poses look beautiful instead of like gymnastics. Rainey met Ochoa stretch-for-stretch, even supporting her in a perilous pose while he lay on the floor and she was upright. Most often cast in character parts, Rainey surprised with a bravura neoclassical performance.

Slaughter on Tenth Avenue Nov. 3, Pennsylvania Ballet Academy of Music