American Festival II

The Boston Ballet

at the Wang Center (T. Boylston)

April 6-8 at 8 pm, April 9 at 2 pm

tickets: $12-62, $12 student rush 1 hr

before curtain

Following on the bright red heels of the extraordinary evening that was "American Festival I", the Boston Ballet's "American Festival II" offers a range of modern ballet experiences, not all of them satisfying.

First in the program, Eliot Feld's "Contra Pose" (1990) is nothing short of profound. It astounds by constantly merging and deconstructing different aspects of dance, creating a barrage of visual images that collide and regroup like highly-charged atomic particles.

Unlike many traditional ballets, Feld's piece shows not only the reality of what the dancers are supposed to represent, but also their existence as bodies on stage, as a reality in and of themselves.

Feld's choreography calls for the dancers to appear informally on stage to warm-up as the audience is being seated. This merging of representation and reality becomes a unifying force once the lights dim and the music starts.

To the complex rhythms of C.P.E. Bach's symphonies, 18 black-clad dancers constantly oscillate, literally and figuratively, between classical and new forms.

Their movements are in perpetual conflict. Traditional ballet positions are intermingled with unfamiliar forms. Rhythms are synchronized and instantaneously contradicted.

In one instance, women press their hands together as if in prayer, then proceed to turn them and place them over their heads in a portrait of bondage. The effect is disturbing.

The classically trained company's execution of Feld's challenge to traditional ballet is commendable, with minor exceptions. The dancers falter during Feld's complicated, highly rhythmic patterns, when they lose their sense of the sequences' purpose and break their connection to each other in the chaos.

These problems do not undermine the overwhelming power of "Contra Pose." This experiment in illusion and reality is a stunning development in dance that Feld enforces masterfully.

However, "Contra Pose" does not work well as an opening piece. Its challenge to the form and structure of ballet dampens the following, more traditional works in the program.

"Waterbaby Bagatelles" (1994), with its fetish for the aesthetic, is Twyla Tharp's gesture towards more conventional dance. It comes complete with dazzling moves, eclectic jazzy tunes, beautiful aqua bathing costumes and clever florscent scenic effects; it is everything a ballet should be.

Unfortunately, considering Tharp's reputation for creating works that challenge the form and direction of dance, a traditional ballet just doesn't cut it. "Waterbaby Bagatelles" is beautiful, but inevitably pointless.

Everyone moves with flair and does the impossible with seeming effortlessness. The audience is charmed, astounded and amused in turn. However, this type of dance has been done many times before.

Tharp produces much more moving work when she doesn't limit herself to the illusionistic world of traditional ballet. "Waterbaby Bagatelles," in contrast with her disturbingly powerful "In the Upper Room," which threatened to bring the relief sculpture down from the rafters of the Wang Center in "American Festival I," demonstrates this all too well.

To their credit, the dancers are stronger in this piece than in any other in the program. It was tailor-made for the Boston Ballet to celebrate the company's 30th Gala Anniversary last April.

In particular, Patrick Armand moves with great precision and energy. From athletic leaps to street-dance-inspired moves, Armand emerges as the vibrant centerpiece of a well-executed but uninspired ballet.

As for George Balanchine's "Who Cares?" (1970), the title, tritely, says it all.

Set to the nostalgic standards of George Gershwin, the ballet is even gaudier than "Waterbaby Bagatelles," and just as superfluous.

Broadway was built on glitzy spectacle, and Gershwin is one of its foremost proponents. Unfortunately, the Boston Ballet is a little too far off-Broadway to handle the hyperbolic material of the Great White Way.

Instead of allowing the over glamour of Balanchine's choreography to shine through, the talented company looks like dancing fish out of water, in atrocious, spangled satin tutus, no less. Their smiles forced, the company is unable to muster the crucial showy energy to make the piece a success.

The lone exception is Adriana Suarez, whose sultry interpretations of "Fascinatin' Rhythm" and "Loving That Man" (the latter with the versatile Armand) were the only memorable highlights of the piece. Suarze's sensuousness captures the melancholy spirit of the music perfectly, drawing the empathy of the audience.

However, one ballerina, with Armand heroically partnering three pas de deux, can't save a whole ballet. The nostalgia of "Who Cares?" is a bewildering end to "American Festival II."

With the exception of "Who Cares?" and "Waterbaby Bagatelles," the "American Festivals" capture the forward-looking spirit of our country's foremost choreographers. The pieces bode well for the future of American dance, as well as for the Boston Ballet.