Dance Review by Clive Barnes

BALLET LEADER HAS LIVELY FETE

Ballet galas are like nothing else on earth, except for opera galas and dinner parties. In each of these weird activities sense goes out the window and a strange, incalculable chemistry rules.

Sometimes the chemistry works and sometimes it doesn’t. Of course, any Monday - morning quarterback can explain to you precisely why after the event. But to predict the result is altogether chancier.

American Ballet Theater on Monday night put on a smashing gala to open its eight-week spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, and for the life of me I don’t know how or why it so decisively and cheerily worked.

When Lucia Chase used to throw her galas in the old days, she brought guest stars, new and unique gewgaws and rare specialties from the wide world of ballet. ABT’s current artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, will have none of such frippery.

His idea of a gala is simply to show off the entire panoply of ABT’s extensive talent roster, or at least most of it, performing party pieces from the repertory. They have always proved worthy, even interesting, but somehow missing that special gala oomph, that serendipitous chemistry of food, drinks, guests and occasion that characterizes the perfect dinner party.

So what went so right this time? In the first place, the organizers went to pains to present not only the stars, or even the soloists, but also the entire company...

There was plenty of magic being spread around Julie Kent and Julio Bocca in «Giselle», Susan Jaffe and Jose Manuel Carreno in Gsovsky’s «Grand Pas Classique», Paloma Herrera and Angel Corella in the «Don Quixote Pas de Deux», and, the clear audience favorite, Nina Ananiashvili going it alone with her sweepingly undulating arms in «The Dying Swan».

But what a company McKenzie has gotten himself these days! It really is one of the wonders of the dance world...