Bad Behavior

dance

Classical music concerts have a reputation for being refined and elegant, but to Jerome Robbins that's just how things look on the surface. Dig a little deeper and you'll uncover a soap opera of unbecoming activity. Robbins lays it all out in The Concert, a ballet that parodies the pretense of high society. The piece is built around a Chopin piano concert where comically attired listeners indulge in dastardly deeds with bats, knives and chairs. It's fun and fantastical, yet also at least partially based on real-life denizens of the cultural set: bored husbands, ladies with showy hats that obscure your view and people who chew candy in loud, annoying fashion. Robbins blows it all up with outsized slapstick. The 1956 piece gets its Pennsylvania Ballet premiere this weekend. Also premiering is Christopher Wheeldon's "Continuum." Wheeldon is one of ballet's current "It" boys: a 30-year-old star dance-maker who is firmly rooted in the neoclassical idiom. PAB is so enamored of the choreographer that they commissioned him to create a new version of Swan Lake this season — talk about a tall order. Continuum, set to an atonal contemporary music score, features 12 episodes for four couples performing emotional, visually striking duets. And then there's the closer, George Balanchine's light 'n' lovely "Raymonda Variations."

Pennsylvania Ballet, Thu.-Fri., April 28-29, 8 p.m.; Sat., April 30, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., May 1, 2 p.m., $18.50-$70.50, Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., 215-336-2000.

—Deni Kasrel

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