Dance Review Clive Barnes

For the holiday weekend American Ballet Theater has been regaling its audiences at the Metropolitan Opera House with a program - the last performances are tonight and tomorrow - consisting of the newest ballet in its repertory and the oldest.

The chronological odd couple consists of this year’s Lar Lubovitch ballet «The Red Shoes», taken from last year’s flop Broadway musical of the same fated name, and Bournonville’s «La Sylphide», the second-oldest continually performed ballet anywhere, which dates from 1836.

There is no cause to waste words on those feeble «Red Shoes». Having already reviewed its earlier casts, suffice it to say that the latest newcomers to the roles of the Red-Shoe girl and her soon-exhausted swain, Amy Wilder and Charles Askesgard, are perfectly adequate in roles where anything more would be a miracle.

«La Sylphide», on the other hand, already is a miracle, a perfectly preserved example of the 19th-century romantic ballet, kept in near-mint condition by the Royal Danish Ballet for about 160 years.

Out of the ABT repertory for five years, its return on Friday night was made all the more welcome by the company’s Georgian ballerina Nina Ananiashvili, making her first appearance in the title role, and a guest artist, in his company debut, from the Danish ballet itself. New York-born Lloyd Riggins, as the braw, brave Scots hero, James.

Ballet Theater has had a «La Sylphide» since 1964, but Erik Bruhn’s present staging, with lushly pretty designs by Desmond Heeley, dates only from 1983.

It is charming, and generally authentic. I regret the loss of some period touches - the Sylph gravely handing James his hat before his abduction, for example, and many more mime details in the second act. Such tiny vignettes can add enormously to the ballet’s atmosphere.

Yet the outline is excellent, and of course, I thoroughly approve of what is now worldwide practice, of giving the two male solos in the first act - originally danced by anonymous villagers! - to James and his rival, Gurn. This makes perfect sense, so damn tradition.

Ananiashvili - her dancing as light as thistledown, her whole body seemingly wreathed in seductively elusive smiles - made a Sylph full of guileless wiles, and Riggins, nowadays a magnificent Bournonville stylist, danced with fiery precision and acted with total conviction.

As Madge, the demonic Highlands witch whose vengeful machinations destroy the lovers, Victor Barbee proved superb...