Seeing Things: June 2006 Archives

A press release arrives, announcing an exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York. Titled Unknown Weegee, the show runs from June 9 through August 27, 2006. It's culled from ICP's vast collection of images--over 18 thousand--made chiefly in the 1930s and '40s by the tabloid photographer Arthur Fellig (1899-1968), best known by his moniker, Weegee. The announcement is illustrated with the strange and striking shot you see here. In this early release, the figure is not identified; the photograph is enigmatically captioned Cinderella Ball, 1941.

Weegee
Ballerina Marina Franca in her peacock costume, April 18, 1941
Gelatin silver print
© Weegee / International Center of Photography

When we look at this image today, we see double: The woman is both a symbol of classical dancing, old style--Odette with her ruff of feathers at the hip--and the iconic Vegas showgirl we can conjure up in our mind's eye, though we've never been to Vegas.

Typically, Weegee captures his subject mercilessly in garish light. A crime photojournalist by trade and temperament, he pretends to do no more than document brute surface reality--the bleeding corpse lying in the gutter, with the cops forming an ironic honor guard around it. In this and his other modes, such as his portrayals of working class folks, down and outs, or victims of disaster and their avid oglers, he cannily provokes our imagination to create the story behind the image. He makes us see.

He also makes us think. Contemplating this lady in her outlandish white costume--all shimmer and froth--we wonder: Who is she? How did she arrive at this time and place? This peculiar destiny? What does her "performance" consist of? Is she, perhaps, a reluctant collaborator in her work? He also makes us dream.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on July 7, 2006.

July 7 (Bloomberg) -- American Ballet Theatre's three-act pirate ballet ``Le Corsaire,'' at the Metropolitan Opera House this weekend, simply wants to entertain you. Its local color is lavish: the exotic bazaars of Turkey, the high and dangerous seas. Crammed with adventure, ``Corsaire'' offers kidnapping and shipwreck, raids and romance.

Blithely immune to political correctness, it makes the most of gorgeous gals being sold into slavery. Its excuse? Opportunities for sensational dancing -- and it was made a very long time ago.

Ballets inspired by Byron's vivid poem ``The Corsair'' have been around for nearly 175 years. ABT's production, staged by Anna-Marie Holmes, stems from the Russian Marius Petipa's 1899 version.

``Corsaire'' is notorious for shameless tinkering to make the leaps higher, the pirouettes flashier and the lifts trickier. Like the legendary opera stars who tailored their cadenzas to their own specific gifts, ABT's celebrated male virtuosos have contributed their share of gasp-producing feats.

Be sure to notice: the bravura ``Corsaire'' pas de deux for the heroine and an ardent male slave, often done out of context as a party piece. Also the Jardin Anime sequence, with its lovely women deployed like the blossoms in a formal garden -- a passage of pure classicism that provides relief from the hokey melodrama. And then there's a shipwreck, a reminder that live-theater effects predate pirate movies.

Heroes and Ballerinas

Three performances this weekend (Friday evening, Saturday matinee and evening) will feature heroes such as Marcelo Gomes, Angel Corella, Jose Manuel Carreno and Herman Cornejo -- with ballerinas to match their daring and charm.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on June 30, 2006.

June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Ballerinas in peril headline the final weeks of American Ballet Theatre's current season at the Metropolitan Opera House. Before the company's run ends on July 15, they'll be continually menaced by death itself, and fates worse than death.

This weekend, Michele Wiles, Paloma Herrera and Julie Kent -- who will mark her 20th year with ABT on July 14 --alternate in the dual role of the poetic Odette and the dazzling Odile in ABT artistic director Kevin McKenzie's version of ``Swan Lake.''

Odette, foolish enough to talk to a seductive stranger when she's out picking flowers, soon discovers the handsome fellow's a demon. He abducts her, transforms her into a swan and adds her to his flock of similarly guileless maidens.

Pure-hearted Prince Siegfried arrives to save her. The next minute, Siegfried's duped into believing the demon's daughter, Odile, is his beloved. Soon, hero and heroine are leaping from a cliff to their death.

At the close of the 19th century, Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, abetted by Tchaikovsky's score, made poetry out of this weird and violent tale.

The pastoral heroine of Frederick Ashton's 1952 ``Sylvia'' is a huntress ``chaste and fair.'' She resists even the respectful overtures of her shepherd suitor, only to be carried off by a robber named Khan, who woos her with his ill-gotten riches, implicitly threatening rape.

Bravura Feet

Cupid arrives in the nick of time to ensure an upbeat ending. The authoritative Gillian Murphy, the athletic Wiles, the sultry Herrera and the romantically delicate Kent take turns in the title role on July 3, July 5 matinee, July 5 evening and July 6, respectively.

Pirates abound in ``Le Corsaire,'' a 19th-century concoction memorable largely for its bravura feats, which have been ratcheted up by generations of increasingly adept technicians.

The ladies must be almost as daring as the men and sexy to boot, as will be seen July 7 (Herrera and the piquant Xiomara Reyes) and twice on July 8 (Wiles and Maria Riccetto at the matinee, Irina Dvorovenko and Stella Abrera in the evening).

July 10 to 15 is wall-to-wall ``Romeo and Juliet,'' in Kenneth MacMillan's emotionally extravagant version. The first two Juliets will be Diana Vishneva and Alessandra Ferri, both acclaimed for their dramatic power.

Familiar Plot

Everyone knows the plight of this heroine: put on the marriage market before she's done playing with dolls, promised to a guy her parents pick, fated to fall in love at first sight with the scion of their mortal enemies, and so on. After increasingly trying and bloody events, suicide seems a relief.

The bouquets presented to ABT's much-beleaguered ballerinas will have been well-earned.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on June 23, 2006.

June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Flamenco is intimate, essentially tragic. Practitioners have been trying forever to theatricalize the form for the commercial stage. But Rafael Amargo, a celebrated performer-director in his native Spain, may be the first to use flamenco as the backbone of an entertainment that falls between vaudeville and musical comedy.

His 2002 ``Poeta en Nueva York,'' given the first of two performances at New York City Center last night, advertises itself as a multimedia production. It felt like an Andalusian ``Riverdance.''

The work is based on vivid, hallucinatory poems written by Federico Garcia Lorca during a fraught year he spent in the city. They're recited on tape, in Spanish, no translation provided. Hyperactive, arty film projections constitute the scenery.

Live and loud (the miking terrorizes the eardrums), three red-hot-mama vocalists, incidental musicians and a gang of dancers whose zapateado -- that stamping and tapping of heels -- means business deliver a stream of vignettes. Not surprisingly, these run the gamut of the gaudier emotions.

The choreography, equally punched up, could be called fusion-flamenco. It borrows from ballet, jazz, folk dance and show-biz tactics like the chorus line.

Amargo, of course, is the show's dancing star. He has a face straight out of Goya and a maverick stage persona. Like an outrageous youth who mixes daring with charm, he doesn't hesitate to milk the audience for its affection.

Superficial Star

He's reputed to be a flamenco adept, and his footwork is indeed pyrotechnical. But his belly (which he bares) is slack, and his thighs lack animation. The deeper aspects of flamenco elude him.

A guest artist, Rasta Thomas, appeared in a brief solo, offsetting his bravura ballet feats with a few moves from his martial-arts training. American Ballet Theatre's Angel Corella, though slated for a guest slot, wasn't able to participate.

Nevertheless, the show went on for over two hours without intermission.

Far closer to the real thing is Noche Flamenca, where Soledad Barrio's dancing offers a crash course in life's passions and pain.

On the small, naked stage of a low-end theater in Manhattan's East Village, beneath a grid of exposed lights, Barrio holds the midsection of her chunky body quiet while her feet attack the floor like a fusillade of bullets.

Her arms lash the air around her head, angled wrists and spiky fingers making a moving crown of thorns. Whirling in place, she becomes a vortex.

Face of Feelings

Soon she's moving as if in a trance, mining a mother lode of human experience and emotions. Her discoveries play across her face, which has the square shape and blunt power of a Mayan mask, at once ravaging it and making it beautiful.

Barrio is ably accompanied by a pair of guitarists, three vocalists and two male dancers. Alejandro Granados, with whom she performs a duet combining seduction and challenge, shares her understanding of flamenco as a means of revealing the soul.

Granados's long solo on the program is daring in its subtlety. Despite some emphatic passages, it's unusually laconic, as if the dancer were conducting a probing conversation with himself. Moments of complete stillness register as pauses for contemplation.

Performed by Granados, commonplace flamenco devices take on startling associations. This is an artist who removes his suit jacket and makes you see a snake shedding its skin.

Juan Ogalla, by contrast, is a show-offy dancer out to impress with bravura technique.

Haughty Pose

He tramples the floor so ferociously with his booted feet that his legs seem to vibrate. And when he faces the musicians and slowly raises his arms as if they were an eagle's wings, his version of the flamenco posture speaks more of arrogance than pride.

Turning on a dime, he snaps his head around military style. Even the sweat that sprays out of his long curly hair seems to be part of his act.

He misses the point that Barrio seems born to convey: Flamenco is not merely about what you can do. At heart, it's about what you are.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on June 15, 2006.

June 15 (Bloomberg) -- American Ballet Theatre is concluding a week of ``Giselles,'' fielding no fewer than five ballerinas in the title role.

Diana Vishneva, from the Kirov Ballet, plays the tragic heroine Saturday evening. The ballet has been going strong since 1841 and the part has been called ``the ballerina's `Hamlet.'''

Giselle, an innocent peasant girl whose aristocratic suitor betrays her, goes mad -- lengthily and vividly -- dying when her weak heart finally cracks. She returns as an unwilling initiate into a tribe of vengeful female ghosts and rescues her fickle lover from their clutches.

Among the dancer's tasks is looking impalpable while executing jumps and leaps that present a major cardiovascular challenge. Another is making the Romantic-era melodrama believable.

Vishneva, one of the most versatile and effective ballerinas of her generation, is unquestionably equal to the assignment. Already a dazzling technician and a forceful actress, she's now reaching for the poetic dimension of the role.

Bye-Bye, Bocca

Ardent fans of ABT's Julio Bocca will assemble June 22 at the Metropolitan Opera House, when the beloved Argentinean star gives his farewell performance with the company.

Part 1 of the event will be Bocca's dancing the male lead in Kenneth MacMillan's ``Manon'' opposite Alessandra Ferri, a longtime partner who complements his own fervor.

Part 2 will be the curtain calls. Onstage, ABT's artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, will present the traditional laurel wreath and a parade of dance luminaries will pay homage. The audience will contribute the standing ovation and flower throw.

Bocca's many enthusiasts will miss his dynamic energy and meticulous form, as well as his convincing acting and personal charisma. But he knows it's time to quit.

He looks forward to a life without constant training, surgery to repair inevitable injuries, and the isolation that comes with celebrity and endless touring.

Still, he isn't turning his back on dance. He'll continue to lead his own company, Ballet Argentino, and explore the blending of classical ballet with the tango, the signature dance of his birthplace.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on June 9, 2006.

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- The New York City Ballet's Sunday matinee at the New York State Theater offers a small Balanchine gem featuring one of the company's most precocious stars-in-the-making.

George Balanchine's 1972 Divertimento from ``Le Baiser de la Fee'' is driven by the choreographer's mystical streak. Created in 1972 to a Stravinsky score, it's an abstract ballet haunted by the suggestion that love and loss are engineered by the workings of Fate.

In the unforgettable closing passage of the dance, a man on an undefined quest and the woman he has found to love are gently but implacably parted in a moving maze formed by their friends.

Casting for the ballet features principal dancer Megan Fairchild, a petite 21-year-old with an air of childlike sweetness. She is also the possessor of a formidable technique and -- most telling -- the ability to grasp the essence of a role that lies beyond its steps.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on June 9, 2006.

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Finally, some glitter! New York City Ballet's Diamond Project, intended to stimulate the company's dancers and its audience through new creations, had been a glum affair until last night's premiere of the sixth of seven commissioned works, ``Russian Seasons.''

Choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, artistic director of Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet, the piece is astute and appealing. Simple, yet sophisticated in construction, it's infused with blithe humor and profound human feeling.

The score -- by Leonid Desyatnikov, a contemporary Ukrainian composer -- is based on traditional Russian songs, set here for string orchestra, solo violin and female voice. Its dozen songs are organized to reflect the turn of the seasons as well as the rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Ratmansky, in turn, borrows familiar motifs from Russian national dancing, while the costumes, by Galina Solovyeva, provide a simple postmodern gloss on native dress.

Nevertheless, ``Russian Seasons'' is no mere ethnic exercise. Folk dance relies on symmetry. The stage patterns Ratmansky fashions with his dancers are examples of ever-shifting, yet flawlessly balanced, asymmetry.

Folk dance springs from rural camaraderie. Ratmansky's choreography incorporates that -- the communal friendships, the teasing, the playful roughhousing, the sense of generations mingling. But it goes much further.

Anger, Evil, Death

One scene depicts temper flaring out of control, another a malevolent haunting. The dance concludes with a wedding that may, after all, be a death -- the white-clad ``bride'' a cousin to Romantic ballet's doomed Sylphide.

In its most moving passage, a woman reveals a deep grief to an intimate ensemble of three couples -- her near and dear. They draw back, then offer empathy and comfort, but eventually abandon her, reminding us that the keenest sorrow leaves one utterly alone.

The ballet uses a dozen dancers of all ranks, from corps to principal, and every one of them looks terrific -- hand-picked and elated to be there.

Apart from Ratmansky's contribution, the Diamond Project, the focus of the company's current season, has offered little cause for rejoicing. That has been the case in its past five incarnations. One might well ask if the time, energy and money it consumes wouldn't be better devoted to cultivating the Balanchine repertory, NYCB's main treasure and first responsibility.

Of the most recent entries, by Mauro Bigonzetti and Jean- Pierre Bonnefoux, Bigonzetti's ``In Vento'' was the more viable. The choreographer, who brought his Reggio Emilia-based Compagnia Aterballetto to New York last fall, aims chiefly for striking effects.

Twisted Poses

Set to an atmospheric score by Bruno Moretti, ``In Vento'' centers on a soul-searching fellow (I saw the grave Edwaard Liang in the role) in a fathomless dark space.

He conjures up four couples who twist their beautiful bodies into baroque poses. Do they represent his past or his dreams?

Another pair (Maria Kowroski, the company's Queen of Adagio, and Jason Fowler) emerge as more important than the others, their duet a primal scene.

The prevailing mood is eerie as well as erotically charged. And the whole business is unquestionably gorgeous. But most of what's happening is pure surface, no inside.

Bonnefoux's ``Two Birds With the Wings of One'' attempts to evoke ancient China by means of classical ballet, a strategy destined for disaster.

To ear-catching cross-cultural music by Bright Sheng, the company's composer in residence, Bonnefoux vaguely outlines the pathos-laden tale of a woman who chooses to join her warrior-mate in death.

Old Chestnuts

The choreography delivers every cliche that has adhered to this theme. Given Bonnefoux's experience -- principal dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet, then with New York City Ballet, now head of North Carolina Dance Theatre -- you'd think he'd know better.

The vibrant Sofiane Sylve and her partner, Andrew Veyette, did their earnest best in the discouraging circumstances.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on June 5, 2006.

June 5 (Bloomberg) -- Made for each other, the shy young woman and her awed princely partner can barely let their eyes meet, let alone allow their hands to touch. Yet in the space of a few minutes their hesitant dance escalates into an ecstatic declaration of love -- the kind that lasts forever after.

This appealing duet is a high point of James Kudelka's 2004 ``Cinderella,'' given its New York premiere by American Ballet Theatre on June 2 at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Set to the familiar Prokofiev score and tweaking the old story with pop psychology, the three-act ballet is the centerpiece of the troupe's spring season, which runs through July 15. It was originally created for the National Ballet of Canada, the choreographer's home base, and staged by the Boston Ballet in 2005.

Instead of a Cinderella who's the victim of malice, Kudelka conjures up a suburban heroine who is emotionally deprived by an alcoholic stepmom and a pair of materialistic stepsisters.

He has chosen to banish Dad and any hint of the benevolent biological Mom, whose death led to her daughter's sorry plight. This is his privilege, of course, though in exercising it he banishes some of the pathos crucial to the Cinderella theme.

Kudelka, who says in interviews that he loathes the idea of a moneyed, powerful hero playing savior to a passive heroine, also introduces the idea that Cinderella and the Prince rescue each other.

More Jokes, Please

Via Cinderella, the Prince can flee a court corrupted by excessive luxury and social snobbery. The happy pair settles down at Cinderella's address, in the cozy domesticity of well-swept hearth and well-cultivated garden, miraculously rid of dysfunctional relatives.

Unfortunately, these concepts aren't easily conveyed through dancing. They're more the stuff of interviews and program notes. And Kudelka's tinkering, simultaneously, with life's realities and beloved ``myth'' is a dangerous business. What's more, the comic elements of the ballet, such as the stepsisters' unseemly antics at the ball, are uninspired slapstick.

However, several passages of pure dancing are very good indeed -- suave and inventive. The mutual declaration- of-love duet blends naturalism with the standard classical- dance vocabulary and comes up with poetry. Solos for the four spirits of nature who transform Cinderella into a belle of the ball are distinctive for their color and charm.

Myopic Stepsister

The dances for the ensemble are intricate yet windowpane-clear. And David Boechler's snazzy art deco costumes -- contrasting black and white with riots of color -- make everyone look compelling.

Leading the opening night cast, Julie Kent and Marcelo Gomes were picture-perfect, with dance capabilities to match. Erica Cornejo's radiant glee made the outlandish behavior of the myopic stepsister tolerable.

Two cameo roles stood out. As the stepmother, Martine van Hamel, a beloved ABT ballerina of the 1970s and 1980s, portrayed a lady as desperate to maintain her dignity as she was to procure her next drink. Ballet mistress Susan Jones brought Dickensian depth to a Fairy Godmother conceived by Kudelka as a benevolent, slightly bossy Edwardian dowager.

Ashton, Disney

Kudelka hasn't created a ``Cinderella'' for the ages. The unforgettable treatments of the theme are the perennially touching 1948 ballet by Frederick Ashton -- to be presented in October by the Chicago-based Joffrey Ballet -- and Charles Perrault's sly and elegant 17th-century rendition of the tale.

There's no ignoring the 1950 Walt Disney film, either. Once seen, it's never forgotten, even if you despise it. But for an evening's entertainment -- or, better yet, an afternoon's, in the company of a child -- Kudelka's ``Cinderella'' will do.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on June 1, 2006.

June 1 (Bloomberg) -- A pair of trim-bodied teenagers are dancing in a huge Lincoln Center studio rimmed with ballet barres. The petite, sweet-faced young woman zooms across the space like a plane on its runway and, airborne, flings herself at her partner head first, body horizontal. He catches her deftly, saving her from sudden death and managing to look princely about it.

These beautiful daredevils are rehearsing for the annual School of American Ballet's Workshop Performances -- this year, two on June 3 and one on June 5 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater -- that display tomorrow's classical-dance stars, nearly all of them under 20. Their academy, founded by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein in 1934, is the chief purveyor of dancers to the New York City Ballet and a rich source for other ranking companies in the U.S. and abroad.

It's a training ground for finalists. Entry is by a highly selective audition even for the first year's 8-year-olds. Beginning with the intermediate division, scouts scan applicants nationwide and bring them to the academy's boarding school.

As the youngsters mature, their instruction becomes progressively more intense. At every level, students who prove to be unsuitable for a professional career are let go. Kirstein liked to call SAB ``the West Point of ballet academies.''

Workshop performances are among the most thrilling shows in town because of the pre-professionals' dazzling technique and stage presence. They're touching, too, for the glimpses they offer of nascent artistry.

Basic Balanchine

Ten days to showtime, Suki Schorer, a former NYCB principal, is polishing her production of Balanchine's ``Square Dance'' (created in 1957, revised in 1976). Her detailed instructions to both ensemble and three alternating casts of principals reveal the basics of Balanchine-style dancing. The emphasis is on extravagant energy, clarity even at breakneck speed, and profound musicality.

One of the girls assigned the ballerina role looks no older than a 'tween. She has the technique of a prodigy, but her performance is entirely innocent, devoid of personality. Schorer reminds her to inflect it with an occasional smile here, a rakish twist of the shoulders there. ``Keep it juicy,'' she counsels.

Susan Pilarre, another NYCB alum, is rehearsing Richard Tanner's staging of Balanchine's 1949 ``Bourree Fantasque.'' Like Schorer, she has meticulously deconstructed the choreography so that her dancers understand the precise shape of every step and where it belongs in space and time.

Equally important, she has taught her proteges to put the discrete bits back together. They flow so well now, the dance looks almost spontaneous.

All on Target

The opening section of this ballet is all verve. The middle part is dreamy and romantic. The finale is an organized maelstrom. Here everyone must be on target at every moment: whirling, jumping, leaping, interweaving in kaleidoscopic patterns.

If the execution isn't nearly perfect, the result will be chaos. Pilarre eyes a run-through intently. Before she delivers her corrections to her breathless crew, she concedes, ``A lot of that was good.''

David Prottas, an 18-year-old who has two featured roles in the coming performances, explains why a young dancer needs more than classroom training: ``In school it's easy to forget that dance is actually a performing art. And I want to be known as a performer, not just a technician. When you're on stage, a certain amount of theatrics is just as important as the movement aspect. In workshop I've had a chance to nurture that.''

The program will be completed by Christopher Wheeldon's ``Scenes de Ballet,'' created for the NYCB in 1999 and performed by 64 School of American Ballet pupils. In the present cast, the youngest dancer is a fourth-grader; several of the principals aren't yet old enough to vote.

Toe Shoes and Tears

The piece, a theatrical fantasy on the training of classical dancers, capitalizes on the mystique that surrounds the subject. Those familiar with SAB realize that the process is more prosaic -- and tougher. It begins with very young, flexible and well- proportioned bodies and, after some nine years of sweat, toil and tears, produces capable practitioners and the occasional unforgettable artist.

Among the advanced students appearing in workshop performances, some will stay on at SAB for a year or two of further instruction. Others will be launched immediately into their careers. Nearly all of them work with single-minded devotion. And ambition. No one is looking for a safe berth.

Former SAB students include Jacques d'Amboise, Suzanne Farrell, Gelsey Kirkland, Arthur Mitchell, Ethan Stiefel, Wendy Whelan and Edward Villella. The present crew wants to be like that.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times on May 28, 2006.

I SEE Cinderella not only as a fairy-tale character but also as a real person, feeling, experiencing and moving among us," Sergei Prokofiev has been quoted as writing of his score for the ballet "Cinderella." Composed in 1945, it has inspired numerous choreographers with very different takes on the theme, among them, recently, James Kudelka. His "Cinderella," created in 2004 for his home company, the National Ballet of Canada, will be given its New York premiere by American Ballet Theater on Friday at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Mr. Kudelka's primary intentions seem to echo Prokofiev's statement. "I wanted to give the characters a human texture," he said in an interview at the company's studios.

He shied away from "Cinderella" for at least a decade, he said, because he disliked the rags-to-riches scenario: the idea that the Prince, with his wealth and power, condescends to rescue poor Cinderella. In his ballet the two rescue each other. Cinderella allows the Prince to escape the superficial life of his court, while he offers her the single-minded attention and love her unthinking, unfeeling stepfamily never provided. Attracted by the transformation theme in the tale, Mr. Kudelka takes it from pumpkin-into-coach level to personal evolution. "Call it dime-store psychology, if you will," Mr. Kudelka said, "but I think it works here."

His Cinderella is a young woman who is not so much put upon as confused. "She doesn't know it's love she's looking for, because she's never experienced it in her dysfunctional family," he explained. "The stepmother and stepsisters are suburban social climbers who care only about appearances."

Cinderella's prince suffers similarly as heir apparent in a court devoted to luxury, vanity and social one-upmanship. Once the hero and heroine meet, find that they "complete each other," as Mr. Kudelka puts it, and conquer the obstacles in their way, they choose to settle down in simple domestic tranquillity. "My main objective, from beginning to end," Mr. Kudelka said, "was to make this story make sense."

The Cinderella story is an ancient one, having first appeared in print in ninth-century China. It was first published in Europe in the 1630's in an anthology of folk and fairy tales recounted lustily in Neapolitan dialect by Giambattista Basile. The versions best known today, if often in bastardized form, come from the Frenchman Charles Perrault and the Germans Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

Working in the first half of the 19th century, the Brothers Grimm conjured a "Cinderella" heavy with horror: torture, self-mutilation (to make the foot fit the shoe), birds pecking out the eyes of the wicked. Perrault's version, by contrast, is urbane: elegant and witty. Despite his sly social satire he offers an optimistic view of human nature, allowing Cinderella's virtue to extend to forgiveness of the evils previously done to her once she has come into her kingdom. "Cinderella" was performed as a ballet long before Prokofiev wrote the music now so closely associated with it. Records of European productions date to the early 19th century. Marius Petipa may have had a hand in a production at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1893. And in 1938 Michel Fokine took it up for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo with less than memorable results. Meanwhile the Cinderella theme is said to have tempted no less a composer than Tchaikovsky, and Johann Strauss turned to the tale for his only ballet. But it was Prokofiev's score that provided the catalyst for Cinderella ballets that would last. Which is not to say that it makes the choreographer's job easy. A sardonic and foreboding tone underlies the ecstatic passages, contradicting the idea of virtue rewarded and suggesting instead that evil lurks just about everywhere.

This score, though intended for the Kirov Ballet at the Maryinsky Theater, was first choreographed in 1945 by Rostislav Zakharov for the company's Moscow-based rival, the Bolshoi Ballet. A year later Konstantin Sergeyev created the Kirov's version, revising it in 1964, presumably following the trend of the time to replace mime with dancing. Typical of Soviet ballet, those early versions delivered the story in a simple, straightforward way, making clear its core sentiments: rage, scorn, pathos, pity, wonder and romantic bliss. Frederick Ashton created one of the most rewarding "Cinderella" ballets to date, interweaving the tender, the comic and the luminous. It was choreographed in 1948 in London for what is now the Royal Ballet. Its enduring appeal was evident in its enthusiastic reception at the Lincoln Center Festival's Ashton Celebration of 2004. It will also be presented in Chicago by the Joffrey Ballet this fall.

Ashton was fortunate in his original cast, whose individual gifts seem imprinted on the roles. The ballet was intended for Margot Fonteyn (though an injury kept her from dancing at the premiere). The character of Cinderella called upon her natural ability to convey unadulterated goodness, wistfulness and spunk, and to chart the course of love, from its burgeoning to its elated fulfillment.

Inevitably more recent years have brought newfangled takes on "Cinderella." Maguy Marin's 1985 version for the Lyon Opera Ballet, a bleak, haunting view of childhood, outfitted the dancers in grotesque masks and body padding to turn them into life-size dolls. Rudolf Nureyev's 1986 production for the Paris Opera Ballet, which gave the story a Deco-era setting and a heroine who yearns to be in pictures, was all colorful, outlandish fun. Alexei Ratmansky's 2002 version for the Kirov depicts family and society as cynical environments barely tempered by the hero and heroine's tender romance.

Although Ballet Theater has had two earlier productions of "Cinderella" in its repertory -- a quirky version by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Peter Anastos, created for the company in 1983, and Ben Stevenson's popular conventional production, acquired in 1996 -- Kevin McKenzie, the company's artistic director, thought it was time for something new.

"I was delightfully engaged by James's approach," he said of Mr. Kudelka's version. "It's serious theater that is very funny. Its humor is innocent and, at the same time, sophisticated and irreverent. It has some of the most complex choreography imaginable, yet overall it looks simple and natural."

While Mr. Kudelka's "Cinderella" is unusually heavy on ideas, it doesn't neglect dancing for its own sake. The complex patterning for the fairies, with four soloists weaving at high speed through an ever-shifting maze formed by the ensemble, looks like a close-call victory of order over chaos. By contrast, the dawning-love pas de deux for the hero and heroine embodies Mr. Kudelka's ideal of "dancing that has such a natural flow the audience doesn't realize it's seeing steps," he said. "The dancer simply looks like an emanation of the music."

The ballet also provides sheer entertainment. The shenanigans of the stepsisters aspiring to high society have a near-slapstick quality. The shoe theme is given sly running commentary, beginning with a barefoot Cinderella who graduates to pink-satin point shoes only when she has reached glass-slipper stage, which they symbolize. Not least there's the airborne pumpkin that descends on the royal ballroom to deliver Cinderella as if it were her private helicopter or a glowing orange spaceship.

Copyright © 2006 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on May 19, 2006.

May 19 (Bloomberg) -- What do you want to see at the ballet? High flyers and gyroscopic turners? Unforgettable characters embodying larger-than-life fates? Gorgeously honed bodies obeying the rules of classical dance with impeccable form?

American Ballet Theatre will be at New York's Metropolitan Opera House from May 22 through July 15, with a storybook repertoire and a roster of 17 principal dancers who will virtually guarantee all these thrills. Each of these artists is unique -- singularity being essential to stardom.

Gillian Murphy and Michele Wiles represent a distinctly American type of ballerina: frank and forthright. Murphy is a bold dancer with steely technique, a flair for drama and a sense of humor. Wiles, a standout for sheer athletic prowess, is a leggy blond who reminds you of the girl next door.

Julie Kent is the one you fall in love with, a porcelain beauty who infuses even abstract roles with tender feeling. Darker and more fervid portrayals are the province of Alessandra Ferri, an expert at heroines in trouble.

A number of ABT's principals were trained in their native Russia. Irina Dvorovenko, from Kiev, is an old-school Russian type who revels in displaying her fluid line, ravishing poses and diva glamour. By contrast, her husband, Maxim Beloserkovsky, also from Kiev, is a fastidious, reticent lyric dancer.

Another member of the Russian Diaspora, the Kirov-trained Vladimir Malakhov, is long and lanky, with a troubled air; he makes you think of a haunted poet. Diana Vishneva, on loan from the Kirov Ballet, is the woman for whom no step is too difficult, no style impossible to master.

Latin Stars

An even larger constellation of ABT's stars grew up speaking Spanish -- outside the United States. This group contributes most heavily to ABT's reputation for having a roster of male virtuosi unequaled anywhere. It also supports the argument that, today, men are stealing the limelight from the ballerinas.

The Cuban Jose Manuel Carreno is the sexiest of these guys, all gallantry and adoration in his partnering, sensuous in his most daring solo feats. Angel Corella, a technical dazzler from Madrid, is engagingly boyish and, as his first name implies, radiant with joy.

Noble Looks

Marcelo Gomes, from Brazil, is proverbially tall, dark and handsome. With those looks and his fine classical technique, he's perfect in noble-prince roles. His secret ace is his delight in villain and comic parts.

Herman Cornejo, a native of Argentina, isn't tall or gorgeous enough to be a natural for princely type-casting. Yet he may be the most gifted mover of them all.

Another Cuban, Carlos Acosta, is the ``wild man'' of the group. His dancing is huge in scale, raw in its daring, barely held in check by the dictates of classicism.

Julio Bocca (about to retire from ABT) and Paloma Herrera, both from Argentina, along with the Cuban Xiomara Reyes, complete the ``Latin'' contingent. The stellar American virtuoso Ethan Stiefel, recuperating from knee surgery, will be absent this season but back on board in the fall.

At least three dancers at the soloist level are as compelling as the officially designated stars. David Hallberg, the epitome of classicism -- he looks like Prince Valiant and dances like a dream -- is already cast as if he were a principal. He'll get the official title he deserves on opening night.

Potential Principals

The Kirov-bred Veronika Part, with her lush dancing, seems destined for the top. She needs only to curb her tendency to laziness on the one hand and willful stylistic exaggeration on the other. Erica Cornejo (like her brother Herman) lacks the ideal physique for classical dancing yet represents its very spirit.

The corps de ballet, 60 strong, abounds in vivid dancers and potential stars. Dance-goers enjoy spotting promising favorites among them. For all that the Metropolitan Opera House is a temple of high art, this indoor sport is irresistible.

As usual, ABT's spring season will be heavy on the multi-act narrative ballets the public prefers. The novelties here are the company premiere of the Canadian choreographer James Kudelka's version of ``Cinderella'' and a revival of Kenneth MacMillan's turbulent ``Manon.''

Kent, celebrating her 20th anniversary with the company, is cast to type as the wistful, tender heroine of the fairytale piece, while Ferri is celebrated for her impassioned Manon.

But these ballets and familiar favorites boast many alternating interpreters. The season offers seven different Swan Queens, six Juliets, and five Giselles, each scrupulously matched with the male partner who's her Mr. Right.

``Le Corsaire'' brings out the virtuosi -- men and women alike -- in droves, while the company premiere of John Cranko's ``Jeu de Cartes'' showcases those with a gift for comedy. In the course of the eight-week run, a given principal dancer will portray an astonishing range of types. Today, the name of the game is versatility.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on May 11, 2006.

May 11 (Bloomberg) -- Imagine entertaining a gala audience with a pair of new ballets set to music unfriendly to dancing.

Inexplicably, this is what the New York City Ballet attempted last night with the premieres of contributions to its Diamond Project by the company's artistic director, Peter Martins, and its resident choreographer, Christopher Wheeldon. Creativity always means risk; still, the evening faltered.

Martins's ``The Red Violin'' takes its name from the subtitle of the score it's set to, John Corigliano's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. The music ranges from eerie to ominous, yet never provides the rhythmic support dancing thrives on.

The ballet, peopled by two main couples and two subordinate pairs, seems to be set in a dark underworld. There, the women -- strong, fluent, emphatic dancers led by Jennie Somogyi and Sara Mearns -- are powerful goddesses, not necessarily benign ones.

The movement most often is weighted, sculptural and peculiar. The prevailing mood is apocalyptic, as is often the case in contemporary ballet. What's more, as is often the case with Martins, significant-other responsibilities are divided, and romance arrives in dreams that are more like nightmares.

Martins's ingenuity is evident in a double duet for the principals. One couple, then the other, performs successive bits of the choreography. Then the two pairs join to dance as if they formed a single organism.

The feat leaves you duly impressed. But it has no theatrical effect or human resonance, so it also leaves you cold.

Gray Tutus

Wheeldon co-opted Bartok's Piano Concerto No. 3 for his ``Evenfall.'' Appropriately costumed in shadowy gray, it's a tutu ballet, but a mighty strange one.

Wheeldon is a remarkable craftsman, and he deploys his oddly matched principal couple (the stately Miranda Weese and the flyaway virtuoso Damian Woetzel) and a 12-woman, six-man ensemble intelligently and elegantly. What's more, he includes a subtext of subtle references to ``Swan Lake'' meant, I think, to charm veteran fans.

But the dancing is fragmented, sparsely strewing images across the stage without ever getting them to cohere or to form a meaningful relationship with the score. The best segment, suggesting the nostalgia and melancholy of lost love, treats the Bartok as nothing more than mood music.

Given such lackluster fare as Martins's and Wheeldon's latest efforts, why does the City Ballet's Diamond Project keep on going? Billed as ``a festival of new choreography,'' it's now in its sixth incarnation, with few, if any, memorable results.

Creating Dance

There are two reasons for the making-it-new activity. One: George Balanchine set the example. He took the august classical ballet tradition he'd inherited from the 19th century and thrust it -- technique, repertory and the training of dancers -- into the future. The New York City Ballet, created to house his genius, naturally has an inclination to look forward rather than back.

Two: No dance company can survive if it presents old works exclusively. Audiences won't tolerate that; neither will the dancers. (And underwriters are reluctant to pay for it.) Everyone involved has an insatiable appetite for the next step.

Sadly, since Balanchine's death in 1983, the classical- ballet world has produced no talent that comes even close to his. Nearly all of today's ostensibly cutting-edge works seem same old, same old, while the inventive beauty of ``Serenade'' (1934), ``Concerto Barocco'' (1948), ``Agon'' (1957) and so on remains astonishing -- when they're given intelligent and loving productions.

Keeping Focused

Some would argue that to pave the way for the next Balanchine, you must continue to search for viable new work and provide it with a platform. But it's like looking for orchids in the desert.

City Ballet would do well to devote less time, money and attention to the shallow stimulation of novelty and more to filling its primary obligation: doing justice to the Balanchine masterworks in its custody. This job has been neglected for some time.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on May 3, 2006.

May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Ogled by video cameras, a nerdy fellow complains, in words, about his uncaring rock-star lover. A professor who fancies herself a Catherine Deneuve clone laments, again in words, her failure to seduce a female student. Sixteen agile dancers go about their business largely hidden from view.

With ``Kammer/Kammer,'' which opened last night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Howard Gilman Opera House, William Forsythe introduced his newly formed company to New York with a work oddly short on choreography.

For those who have followed Forsythe's successful, if lately turbulent, career in Germany, the choice was baffling. It may be prophetic, indicating Forsythe's plans for the future.

Created in 2000, ``Kammer/Kammer,'' pretends to be a real- time recording of a film that is projected on screens throughout the auditorium. Most of the live action takes place concealed behind moveable walls.

Spectators get titillating glimpses of it. Much occurs on king-size mattresses where menages a trois and quatre do their exercises, copulate and brawl. Eventually, this activity escalates into a loud, mean rampage center stage.

Unrelated Couples

The two main characters -- inspired by the writing of Douglas A. Martin and Anne Carson -- are talkers, not movers. Each the discontented half of two unrelated couples, they dominate the stage.

Their kvetching tends to repeat itself, and the performers - - Dana Caspersen and Antony Rizzi -- lack the charisma to interest us in their unlikely plights.

What dancing there is, is advanced Forsythe, meaning ferocious energy twisting and propelling the body every which way. It's boldly and handsomely performed. Observed on the screens, though, it's inevitably flatter and more pallid than the live version -- and, of course, severely limited by what the camera chooses to see.

The rest of the strategies are simply old hat. Forsythe's back story is more compelling than this piece.

American born, the 56-year-old choreographer studied at the school of the Joffrey Ballet, then danced with its company.

In 1974, he moved on to the Stuttgart Ballet, where he began to develop his highly charged movement style and innovative repertoire. Admirers claimed that it catapulted classical ballet into the future.

Back to Tutus

Appointed director of the Frankfurt Ballet in 1984, he gradually transformed it from a regional opera-house appendage into a major dance company on the strength of his radical choreography.

After 18 years, the city council, which controlled the company's funding, had a fit of conservative thinking. It decided it preferred old-fashioned ballet with tutus and stories. It seemed that Forsythe's contract would not be renewed.

An avalanche of protest from Forsythe enthusiasts followed, giving the municipal officials second thoughts. At this point, the choreographer declared that he no longer wished to associate with such philistines.

The upshot of the tale is that, in 2005, he formed the Forsythe Ballet as a streamlined organization, using many of his old dancers and some of his old repertory, like ``Kammer/Kammer.'' Though still semi-attached to the Frankfurt opera house, the group has a multicity base and operates on a combination of public and private funds.

Creative Collective

Forsythe plans to run it more as a collective, giving the dancers greater control over both the creative and directorial aspects of their work. He also foresees all kinds of new projects, among them site-specific, sometimes interactive, works and multimedia productions in which film and video will play an increasingly dominant role.

This evolution seems natural and all but unstoppable. Yet, as Forsythe's imagination grows more and more conceptual, even his fans may wonder if he isn't moving away from dance, the visceral art, altogether.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on May 1, 2006.

May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Silhouetted against a backdrop of galactic light, Kaitlyn Gilliland, a New York City Ballet apprentice, manipulates her long, pliant body like a goddess murmuring an incantation. Endlessly, she turns on point and stretches into the empty space; she sinks to the ground, still reaching skyward.

Her hypnotic solo, ``Etoile Polaire,'' is set to parts of the haunting music Philip Glass made for the film ``North Star.'' The dance by Eliot Feld, which premiered Friday, launched New York City Ballet's sixth Diamond Project, a festival of new choreography.

The coming weeks of the company's season, which runs through June 25, will showcase seven dance makers: Mauro Bigonzetti; Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux; Jorma Elo; Eliot Feld; Peter Martins; Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon.

Feld, one of the most promising choreographers of the 1970s, made this reiterative sort of solo frequently in the disappointing mature years of his career. Most often, his essays in echolalia were created for Buffy Miller, a female dancer who served as his muse.

Although the form grew tiresome -- indeed, exasperating -- through overexposure, Miller was convincing in it. Gilliland, at 18, doesn't have what it takes: the concentration, the control, the projection and the sexiness.

Discouraging Solo

Even at this early stage of her development, Gilliland's performance in more suitable assignments has proved she's headed for great things. But in this piece she looks like a brave adolescent trying to remember the counts.

The premiere of ``Etoile Polaire'' was part of an all- Feld evening -- a New York City Ballet first. It was imbedded in a segment of four small pieces, among them another discouraging new solo, ``Ugha Bugha.'' Here Wu- Kang Chen, a vivid dancer from Feld's Ballet Tech, gyrated pointlessly, making his own percussion from clattering tin cans attached by wires to his tights.

Two works created in 2004 for Mandance, a recent Feld project, added to the unwelcome evidence of a huge talent that has inexplicably failed to thrive. ``Backchat'' and ``A Stair Dance'' are both gimmicky pieces that deliberately stymie their dancers with a hostile terrain.

``Backchat'' presents three men scaling and splaying themselves across a free-standing wall. It evokes, with some homoerotic implications, the despair and incipient violence of inner-city youth. In terms of dance, though, it's simply self-thwarting.

Bouncy Crew

``A Stair Dance'' has blither intentions, assigning a quintet of performers to five, five-step flights. But, all too typically, Feld has this bouncy crew repeat short phrases like a bunch of obsessive-compulsives.

The program also included a revival of Feld's ``The Unanswered Question,'' an inscrutable affair to Charles Ives music created for NYCB's 1988 American Music Festival. The evening was redeemed by the company premiere of an early, justly beloved ballet, ``Intermezzo No. 1.''

The sextet, choreographed on Feld's first company in 1969, is fresh and effortlessly inventive. Set to Brahms piano pieces, it provides an intimate view of youthful romance and friendship.

The dancers appear alternately as devoted couples and as a group. Their movement is rapturous, sometimes gently funny or poignantly awkward.

Love's Vagaries

``Intermezzo'' makes ballet seem natural, like an emanation of spirit. Shedding their customary high-gloss professional finish for this unfamiliar style, the NYCB dancers did a beautiful job. In the ecstatic lifts and swooning falls, they looked, rightly, like real people subject to the vagaries of love.

Even if this dance were the only one to survive from Feld's output, it would still guarantee his place among the most gifted choreographers of our time.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on April 19, 2006.

April 19 (Bloomberg) -- What did dance icon Mikhail Baryshnikov, actress Judith Ivey and Richard Move, doing his Martha Graham impersonation shtick, have in common last night?

They were barely holding together a gala program that marked, to the day, the 80th anniversary of the Martha Graham Dance Company at New York University's Skirball Center. The show, with no season attached to it, looked like a desperation measure.

The first segment went just fine. Backed by telling slides, Ivey narrated the legendary American choreographer's evolution from the picturesque dances of her first mentors, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, to her own stark, ferocious modernism.

Being brief, these works, from the 1920s and '30s, could be performed in their entirety, and the present company gave them their due. Graham's breakthrough piece, the 1929 ``Heretic,'' which pits the vulnerable outsider against an implacable monolithic group, registered as if it had been made yesterday.

Then trouble set in. ``Martha,'' egoistically, sentimentally and tediously resurrected by Move as a handful of mannerisms, hosted the presentation of excerpts from Graham dances of the 1940s.

Bits and pieces cobbled together from ``Appalachian Spring,'' shorn of the exquisite Shaker-inspired Noguchi set designed to house it, could indicate only feebly a masterpiece that is perfect in its unity.

Disappointing Move

Worse was to come: Move danced the female part in a duet from the 1965 ``Part Real -- Part Dream.'' The role was originated by a gentle lyric dancer, Matt Turney, whose name went carefully unmentioned so you could assume Move was being Martha.

The gender-bending was not so much a problem as was Move's obvious deficiency as a dancer. Partnering him, Desmond Richardson, a distinguished veteran of both modern- dance and ballet troupes, was gorgeous, dignified and luckily equipped with a sense of humor.

An excerpt from another important work, ``Clytemnestra,'' was doctored as well. Wasn't it enough that Fang-Yi Sheu, the finest dancer the Graham company has nurtured in recent memory, performed Cassandra's solo?

Apparently not. Ivey, a fine actress (though perhaps not in classical Greek drama), introduced the piece by reciting a passage from Aeschylus. I suspect that a viewer unreceptive to the expressive choreography would not be enlightened by this rendition of the text.

`Maple Leaf Rag'

The program concluded with Graham's last work, the 1990 ``Maple Leaf Rag,'' a lightweight affair that looks choreographed by committee. It has Graham making fun of her own, highly wrought style, but with none of the mordant wit with which she did just that in her ``Acrobats of God'' 30 years earlier.

About 90 minutes after Baryshnikov's opening endorsement, the proceedings had managed to reveal that the Graham company is in serious distress. Granted, it is no stranger to turmoil. The difficulties have always gone beyond the money troubles common to dance troupes, though the group's present financial straits are indeed dire.

Early in her career, Graham struggled to gain acceptance for her revolutionary dances. Later, her great middle-period works, based on horrific Greek myths, provided a heady drama of their own. Offstage, Graham's impassioned and volatile temperament created perpetual cacophony in the company.

Long Decline

Then there was the long and terrible period of decline before Graham's death in 1991 at the age of 96. In recent years, the company was nearly destroyed by a prolonged legal battle over ownership of the repertory with Graham's heir, Ron Protas.

Protas had rescued Graham from drink and despair after she had to give up her first love, performing. In the course of the '90s, he attempted to wrest control of her creations -- including the extraordinary technique she'd invented -- from the very dancers who had kept the legacy alive in dark times.

Terese Capucilli and Christine Dakin, co-directors who finally set the company back on a path faithful to Graham's best intentions, have now been replaced by Janet Eilber. Like them, she is a former Graham star, though not of their artistic caliber.

From the look of the gala performance and her statement in its program, Eilber has newfangled ideas about how to sell Graham to today's audience. The worry is that in the ``contextualizing'' she proposes, the dances themselves will be so distorted that Graham's genius will be betrayed.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on March 23, 2006.

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- It's the 25th anniversary of the Mark Morris Dance Group, and celebrations have been lavish. The centerpiece is the generous survey of the celebrated -- and still controversial -- choreographer's repertory at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Yet the two works that made their New York premieres last night, ``Cargo'' and ``Candleflowerdance,'' are modest both in scale and expression. Created in 2005 and set to jazz-inflected scores from the 1920s, they are related examples of what big talent might come up with in a lull.

Darius Milhaud's ``La Creation du Monde'' accompanies ``Cargo.'' The sultry, witty music was created for the avant- garde ballet Suedois (choreographed by Jean Borlin), and Fernand Leger's stunning faux-primitive decor matched a libretto based on African creation myths.

Morris, 49, is more plainspoken. He took his inspiration from another kind of community given to magical belief: the cargo cults that arose in the early 19th century on the islands of Melanesia in the South Pacific.

Practitioners believe that a golden age is coming in which ancestral spirits will send worldly goods to deserving have-nots if their faith is intense and their rites correct.

Pole Dancing

Nine dancers, clad in the simplest possible underwear and given to simian-style locomotion, discover three, eight-foot wooden poles. The objects invoke awe, fear and insatiable curiosity.

Members of the little tribe swing the poles toward one another, whirl with them, turn them into bars that pinion bodies into place, climb them, bite them, make them weapons and fetishes.

Periodically, the poles are held at either end by a pair of stalwart bearers, while a smaller dancer hangs from the horizontal rack like a piece of dead game.

These are the most startling images of the piece, and they serve as warnings. Suddenly, the three poles fall unchecked toward one man. The victim collapses, motionless; the others flee, like a flock or herd dispersing at the first sign of peril.

``Cargo'' isn't a big, ambitious piece that blasts you out of your seat, or one so deep that it pierces your heart with pain or delight. But if you saw it without knowing who had made it, you'd know it was the work of a big talent.

Street-Corner Shrine

The same is true for ``Candleflowerdance,'' a sextet set to Stravinsky's ``Serenade in A.''

The pianist, Steven Beck, is placed onstage, along with a weedy bunch of flowers in a jar and a cluster of candles shrouded in glass holders. The objects are typical of the unsophisticated memorials the public creates when tragedy strikes. A lighted rectangle at center stage, where the dancers will gather, might be the footprint of a destroyed building.

Dressed like pedestrians, the dancers congregate in the marked space and gesture skyward, their pointing index fingers suggesting candle flames.

At first, their moves are disjunctive. Anonymous bodies in a crowd, they hardly seem to recognize each other's existence. They come and go at random, passersby on a busy street.

Slowly, certain repeated gestures begin to unite them. They pair up and lean toward each other to form bridges with their arms. They mime weeping. They fall -- unexpectedly, with soft thuds.

Dancing in Dark

Gradually, the dancing grows more fluid and energetic. At moments, it's even playful. Then the mood darkens for good.

One body hurtles through the air into another's arms. The desperate flight is repeated with a different, awkward twist. At last, the group huddles together, a mass of soft flesh seeking comfort in the face of calamity.

The piece is dedicated to the late writer Susan Sontag.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on March 5, 2006.

March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Celebrating the 25th anniversary of his company with a three-week season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mark Morris suddenly seems to be a grand old man of modern dance. Yet he's still in touch with his inner bad boy.

The 49-year-old choreographer's brash, outspoken personality has been toned down by time and experience but not extinguished. His work remains daring.

Who else would do a ``Nutcracker'' featuring a dysfunctional family? Who else would incorporate masturbation into the dual role he created for himself as the noble Queen Dido and the Sorceress who brings about her ruin?

And his choreography continues to stand out, especially in our present era of mediocre dance-making. His work can rival Balanchine's in its profound relation to his chosen score. His musical taste is catholic, to put it mildly, ranging from the ancients to the classical Western moderns, through world and populist genres.

With his unconstrained imagination, matters usually hushed by convention and propriety are out in the open: the nature of sexual desire, for instance, or the fragile veneer that civilization lays over primal aggression.

From his formative adolescent experience with a Balkan folk- dance group, Morris discovered that community offers identity and ecstasy. His choreography says this again and again. The solemn chain dance and the fleet running circles of his masterpiece, ``L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato,'' are not segues but climaxes.

Broad Appeal

The dances appeal to a wide audience because they don't look highbrow. Effort and awkwardness are allowed to show. Even when movement grows light, delicate and lyrical, it isn't rarefied or stylized. Instead, it relates to motions familiar from athletics and pedestrian life.

And the dancers, with their varied physiques and their frank self-presentation, also steer the choreography safely away from the arty.

Three programs on BAM's main stage, the Howard Gilman Opera House, will survey Morris golden oldies that range from the souls struggling in the dark of ``Gloria,'' created in the early 1980s, to the exultant ``V'' of 2001, which seems to celebrate New York's resilience in the face of 9/11 -- and, by extension, humankind's resilience.

Lushest Woman

Most significant among these is a revival of the 1989 ``Dido and Aeneas,'' a fully danced staging of the Purcell opera. It's hard to imagine anyone succeeding Morris in the double role of the noble queen doomed by sexual desire and the gleefully obscene Sorceress. Morris, winding down his performing career as he nears the age of 50, has chosen the company's tallest, lushest woman, Amber Darragh, to do so.

Two recent works, ``Candleflowerdance'' (to Stravinsky's ``Serenade in A'') and ``Cargo'' (to Milhaud's ``La Creation du Monde''), will have their local premieres on the third program, which opens March 22.

Three complementary hour-long concerts at the Mark Morris Dance Center, cater-cornered to BAM, will survey solos, duets and trios that Morris created between 1980 and 2001. All the Morris roles but one in these pieces have been transferred to a younger generation of Morris-trained dancers.

Furthering the Brand

Related activities in what the advance publicity is calling ``The Month of Mark'' are designed to let the audience in on the Morris aesthetic and, no doubt, to further his brand.

They include a film series curated by Morris, evenings of his favorite music (a wildly eclectic range) in the BAMCAFE, photographic exhibitions, panel discussions, and post-performance parties at which one can mingle with the cast.

Morris fans planning to take it all in will find that it's a full-time job.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times on March 5, 2006.

THE video monitor conjures the grainy image of a gangling youth with a mop of dark hair dancing with abandon in a bare studio. When he finishes, the small audience around the edge of the space shouts its approval. The dancer is Mark Morris at 24. The dance, a solo, is his "Dad's Charts," and it's about to go live again after a quarter-century.

The Mark Morris Dance Group will celebrate its 25th anniversary by appearing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music from Wednesday through March 25 in three programs of his major works. Equally compelling, among the many related events, are three hourlong programs of brief solos, duets and trios that Mr. Morris composed from 1980 to 2001. The chamber-scale performances will be given in the late afternoon on the three Saturdays of the engagement in the studio theater of the Mark Morris Dance Center, across the street from the Brooklyn Academy's main stage in the Howard Gilman Opera House. These performances, with the older pieces recast for a rising generation of dancers, are so eagerly anticipated that they've been sold out for weeks.

The three cocktail-hour programs will encompass 15 works, all but one shown just once. The longest lasts 12 minutes, the shortest 5. As a group, these dances reveal the same characteristics as Mr. Morris's more ambitious pieces: a profound musical response to an eclectic choice of scores, an equally wide-ranging imagination and intricate construction.

Still, as Mr. Morris was quick to point out in a recent interview, "Different pieces are good for different reasons." The solo "Peccadillos," danced originally by both Mikhail Baryshnikov with his White Oak Dance Project and Mr. Morris with his own group, starts out as a charming little joke and turns out to be a tragedy in miniature. An onstage accompanist sits at a toy piano as the dancer moves with the mechanical gaiety of a wind-up soldier. Gradually, the dancing grows shadowed and then almost manic as it conveys the inevitable breakdown of the gimcrack mechanism that provided such easy delight, along with the end of childhood innocence.

"Beautiful Day," a duet to Baroque music, proposes lovers who might be dwellers on Saturn. Their movement is heavy and slow, their mood solemn. Their partnering is blunt, effortful and awkward. Even so, they achieve a sublimity ordinary Romeos and Juliets might envy.

"A Spell," a trio danced to mid-17th-century songs by John Wilson, sums up the tradition of pastoral comedy. Rural lovers animated more by their loins than by their brains are egged on by a winged Cupid (originally danced with glee by Mr. Morris). Their antics are jolly -- flirtation nicely seasoned with vulgarity -- until the final passage. Then, as the pair finally lie down and couple, the joys of lust suddenly seem profound.

Why segregate the small pieces from the Opera House repertory? Most of these dances were geared to the modestly scaled performance space that an emerging choreographer could command. Longtime Morris fans based in New York recall their early sightings of the work at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea, where, before its renovation in 2002, the stage measured 36 by 24 feet and spectators were plunked down on some 100 folding chairs arranged precariously on wooden tiers.

Choreography on a grander scale came with the company's engagements at the Opera House, beginning in 1986, and its three-year residency (1988 to 1991) in Brussels at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Belgium's national opera house. Among the many luxuries Mr. Morris enjoyed as director of dance at La Monnaie was the opportunity to double the size of his troupe, making possible larger works like "L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato," the 1988 program-length work that is still accounted his masterpiece.

But according to Mr. Morris and many of his reviewers, the smaller works are in no way lesser ones and deserve the setting in which they will have their best effect. "They don't need an opera house stage," he said. "They're little and gorgeous, and they need to be seen up close. They'd be dissipated in a huge house, sandwiched between the big pieces. One person onstage isn't enough for an opera house, even if you're Isadora Duncan."

Now that so many of these pieces are back in his troupe's active repertory, Mr. Morris plans to use them on tour, to give them further showings at the Mark Morris Dance Center, and -- proof of his commitment -- to keep composing new works on that scale.

Originally, Mr. Morris appeared in many of the small pieces himself. He was, after all, not just the company's choreographer but also its leading dancer. A big, dramatically good-looking man, he is strong, fluid and sensuous, with a diva's appetite for performing. He makes technically thorny maneuvers look entirely natural and infuses his movements with wit, joy, intense theatricality or just plain silliness, as the occasion requires. Most important, he's a master of complex rhythms. As a dancer, he's a hard act to follow.

In reassigning these pieces to a new generation, Mr. Morris has often chosen dancers entirely different from himself in physical type and, frequently, of the opposite sex. Maile Okamura, a tiny, fragile-looking woman, has been given "Dad's Charts" because of her skill in improvisation, which parts of the piece require. Another small woman, June Omura, a longtime company member distinguished for her impassioned dancing, has been allotted "Jealousy," the writhing-snake solo set to Handel's celebrated chorus. A few roles are being cast to type. Daniel Leventhal, the most balletic member of the company, will take over the solo "Three Russian Preludes," created in 1995 for Mr. Baryshnikov, with whom Mr. Morris worked closely in the first phase of the White Oak Project.

For the chamber concerts, Mr. Morris will appear only in the 2001 trio "From Old Seville," a witty riff on the tango that incorporates some dark insights into romance. He won't perform at all at the Opera House.

Does this mean he's hanging up his dancing shoes? "Oh, I'm barely dancing at all these days," Mr. Morris said. "And I don't think I'm going to perform on tour much anymore. But I'm not retired from the stage. I'm sure of that. I'll still be dancing in shows I plan to give in my own building. I like the scale there," adding that it reminded him of Dance Theater Workshop.

To teach the choreography for dances not in the active repertory to the new interpreters, Mr. Morris used a combination of videotapes of earlier casts, the hallowed body-to-body method of having the originators or former performers help teach the roles to their successors, and the essential element of his own presence as explicator and coach. He strongly opposes formal dance notation, a technique considered by many to provide the most accurate recording of choreography.

"It doesn't work at all," he said, referring to Labanotation, the most widely used system. "It's absolutely impossible to use. With my dances, for it to be specific enough, it would take a year to write down one move, and two years to decode it. By then I could have made up thousands of fabulous moves."

The moves that constitute a given piece often add up to an unusually taxing assignment. "Some of these dances are physically very hard to do -- tough, detailed and fatiguing," Mr. Morris said. "Others, especially the ones I originally did myself, are hard on the mind because they're so complicated structurally and conceptually. I always made up dances for myself that were over my head. Then I had to learn them very, very seriously in order to be able to perform them accurately. Believe me, they weren't just loping around to music."

Mr. Morris lavishes praise on his dancers' resourcefulness in learning the pieces. "It was a big project," he said, "and they did a lot of it on their own -- watching the tapes and taking notes or whatever, then figuring things out in the studio. They're smart and independent, and of course they know the language of my work. And they know how I want things danced -- directly, honestly, no showing off, no faking.

"That's one of the things that distinguishes my own performances and my company's. And that's what's exciting."

The company's anniversary season, with its retrospective of small dances, coincides with Mr. Morris's turning 50 this year. Asked how he feels about these landmark events, he said: "Well, turning 50 is just what happens after you turn 49. And I'm not a very nostalgic person. So I'm not going around saying, 'I'm so happy to see these old dances again.' They're good, well-built pieces to fabulous music, and I'm proud of them. But I'm not sobbing with sentiment every minute."

"Let me put it this way," he added. "We're alive, and we're doing this work that we love."

Copyright © 2006 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.