Dance Review by Anna Kisselgoff

2 BALLERINAS’ APPROACHES TO

DUALITIES OF A SWAN

Swan Lake, with a dual role that symbolizes good and evil, is a ballerina’s dream, and both Susan Jaffe and Nina Ananiashvili, a guest from the Bolshoi Ballet, made a vision come true in two separate and superb performances with American Ballet Theater over the weekend. Jeremy Collins, the brilliantly characterized prince to each swan queen and her malevolent double, contributed to the excitement that accompanied the return of the ballet’s four - act version to the repertory after four years.

Amid the ritual bouquet-throwing at the curtain calls (Mr. Collins acted like a gallant flower boy, gathering up the posies thrown by fans at each ballerina’s feet), the term "19th-century war horse" was also tossed out and overheard. Yet as far as this blessedly straightforward production by David Blair is concerned, the term resonates positively. Even a horse, or charger, used in war, is experienced; a classic like Swan Lake demands the authority that only the best of ballerinas can radiate.

Miss Ananiashvili instantly took over the stage with just that presence in the more sensationally danced performance on Saturday night at the Metropolitan Opera House, and her bows were greeted with utter delirium...

Odile... is totally embodied in Miss Ananiashvili’s dazzling mix of bold technique, sensuality and sharply accented seductiveness.

As a guest last summer at the Met in the Kirov’s Ballet's Swan Lake, she did not have the partner she deserved. It will be more than interesting to see her dance on Wednesday night with Julio Bocca (newly recovered from his ankle injury), who can be expected to match her fireworks with his own star presence.

Mr. Collins had only minimal rehearsal time with Miss Ananiashvili after he stepped in for Robert Hill, who is ill. Mr. Collins’s taut, elegant classical style, colored by high, sailing leaps and a wonderfully soft plie, was more polished with Miss Jaffe, his scheduled partner, on Friday. Yet he was consistent on both nights in his acting, having his good-humored prince bewitched into maturity by whatever regal swan, white or black, was in the vicinity.

The current revival, staged by the company’s artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, is the production that Blair, then with the Royal Ballet, staged for Ballet Theater in 1967. Since Mikhail Baryshnikov withdrew his ill-fated 1989 Swan Lake, the company has only produced excerpts or Act II of Swan Lake.

The Blair production, with Oliver Smith's suitably opera-house decor (the castle of von Rothbart, the magician, splits in half and sinks into the lake at the end) no longer looks as spectacular as it once did.

But it comes as a vast relief after all the manic twists on both plot and choreography in so many other modern stagings of Swan Lake. It may not be exactly what Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov choreographed in 1895 in Russia to Tchaikovsky's everthrilling music, but it is a production in direct descent from the 1934 Royal Ballet version that was based on notes of the 1895 original.

Blair’s emendations (notably the ensembles in Act I and part of Act IV) are suitable, if not striking. The virtue of his staging lies in its host of dramatic detail. It is rightly the peasants, not the courtiers, who dance the first waltz and pay homage to Siegfried on his 21st birthday; every aspect of the story is clear. The coherence of the mime (grandly articulated by Miss Jaffe) in which Odette explains that she has been turned into a swan and Siegfried swears his love achieves its tragic symmetry in the last act. Blair’s turbulent storm scene for a frightened corps of swan maidens matches the emotional swirl of Tchaikovsky’s music.

Unfortunately, the company is keeping to the overly slow tempos that Russian dancers have introduced in Swan Lake over the years. Jack Everly’s conducting on both nights was vivid, but the corps needs to be hurried along.