Dance Review by Joseph H. Mazo

 ABT’S CLASSIC SWAN LAKE RETURNS

AMERICAN BALLET THEATER. Swan Lake. Choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, additional choreography by David Blair, staged by Kevin McKenzie. Music by Tchaikovsky. Scenery by Oliver Smith. Costumes by Freddy Wittop. The Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center. Season runs through June 12.

American Ballet Theater’s new production Swan Lake is actually its old production of Swan Lake, which should make a lot of people happy.

David Blair’s staging, with scenery by Oliver Smith and costumes by Freddy Wittop, was first performed by ABT in 1967 and became a standard reference point for American audiences. ABT restaged the ballet in 1981, clearing away some excesses, but maintaining the scheme of the production.

In 1988, Mikhail Baryshnikov, then the company’s artistic director, scrapped the whole business and mounted a new version, which was received with something less than enthusiasm. Some fans wondered why the production on which they’d grown up couldn’t just be brushed off, spruced up and returned to the stage.

Now it has. ABT’s new artistic director has re-staged the Blair version and, at the Metropolitan Opera House this weekend, it looked remarkably good. It may simply be that familiarity breeds pleasure, but it also may be that this direct, intelligent, handsome production quite honestly deserves its classic status.

This is a staunchly traditional Swan Lake: Kevin McKenzie has made no attempt to provide any imaginative insights into characters or plot, and the decor does seems slightly old-fashioned. In the case of a classic fairy - tale - which is what Swan Lake is - however, tradition has a great deal to offer.

Smith’s sets and Wittop’s costumes - obviously refurbished - are good-looking and uncluttered. McKenzie’s crisp staging tells the story neatly and concisely, and the Petipa-Ivanov choreography is treated with the honor it deserves.

At Saturday night’s performance, Bolshoi Ballet ballerina Nina Ananiashvili, making her debut as a guest artist with ABT, danced the double role of Odette-Odile.

Ananiashvili is one of those rare dancers with a technique so strong that it doesn’t show unless she wants it to. She’s clearly in absolute control of her body, so she puts her mind to the business of defining character. You can learn the entire story of the ballet from her wrists and hands.

When she’s dancing Odette, the Swan Queen, they’re curled and almost limp, like fading petals. Her arms beat like tired wings - she makes more frequent and more varied use of the image than most contemporary dancers - with astonishing fluidity. When she comes on as Odile, the Black Swan, the ballerina's fingers extend as if about to send beams of energy flaring through their tips.

Ananiashvili’s Odette is soft (downy might be the word), despondent, and indrawn - you get the feeling that she’s met princes before. Her Odile is an absolute glamor-puss, filled with delight in her own powers of seduction.

The ballerina does have the Russian habit of taking the adagio passages extremely slowly, and the allegros at break-neck speed. She ran off the famous fouettes as if trying for a world speed record (which she almost certainly set), and if the whipping turns were somewhat wild as a result, they were also remarkably exciting.