Word: ballets
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Mature Genius. Based on two sensuous scores by Scriabin, Poème was created for Fonteyn by Cranko, an admirer of hers since their days together at Britain's Royal Ballet. There is something basically appealing about a tribute from one artist to another, and the principal role would seem to be tailor-made for the mature genius of Dame Margot, now 52. She plays a turn-of-the-century operatic diva who meets and dazzles a younger man (Egon Madsen) at a cocktail party. Then, in a swirling dream sequence, she recalls the four great loves...
This conventional theme might serve for a Tennessee Williams playlet. It might even be turned into a decent ballet, but not as Cranko has tarted it up. Poème inconsistently wobbles between crude parody-guests at the party flounce offstage in a way that was clearly meant to be amusing-and lush sentimentalism. The four lithe male dancers who play the diva's lovers are coyly dressed in skintight body stockings and continually swirl enormous Art Nouveau capes about themselves like pretend matadors at a gay beach...
...York State Theater, there is scarcely an evening when somewhere or other the young lovers are not locked in one another's arms. One of the most affecting renditions of their adaptable story is the dance created by Antony Tudor in 1943 for the American Ballet Theater (then known as just plain Ballet Theater). Last week, after several years out of the repertory, it was revived and remounted by Tudor for the ABT summer season at Lincoln Center...
...Romeo differs from the more familiar versions presented by the Stuttgart, Bolshoi, Royal Danish Ballet and England's Royal Ballet. Theirs are full-length, three-act pieces that use the muscularly bejeweled Prokofiev score. Tudor's 50-minute ballet is based on several wetly romantic pieces by English Composer Frederick Delius. Where Prokofiev pants, Delius sighs; where the Russian stomps, the Briton floats. Tudor, a pioneer in bringing psychological realism to ballet, matches the soft, antique mood of the score. The gemlike production looks like a Botticelli painting in motion...
Disunity remains the major problem of the ABT, the nation's oldest ballet troupe. Its star performers are second to none. Trouble is, there are almost as many styles as dancers, and more often than not, productions have a slightly underrehearsed look. Its secondary leads, and particularly the corps, vary from good to "good grief." When Natalia Makarova-the dazzling Russian defector who formerly starred with Leningrad's Kirov Ballet-floats to her forest glade in Swan Lake, the ragged corps resembles a Long Island duck farm rather than anything 19th century Choreographer Marius Petipa had in mind...