American Ballet Theatre - Les Sylphides, Petrouchka, Le Spectre de la Rose, Polovtsian Dances (from Prince Igor)

www.abt.org

presented at
The Metropolitan Opera House
Lincoln Center
New York, NY

Robert Abrams
June 17, 2005

Tonight was part of ABT's Fokine celebration. It was a very good chance to see the variety of Fokine's choreography.

Les Sylphides was full of ethereal movement. The dancers had a lightness and an easy grace about them.

By contrast, Petrouchka was lively. The puppet characters danced with an angular style and a stiffness of movement. There was much acrobatic leaping, by many different characters. The grooms, Buck Collins and Craig Salstein, had good energy. The assembled celebrants were riotous, sometimes appearing in animal heads.

In Le Spectre de la Rose, Angel Corella danced effortless leaps. He had great poise. Amanda McKerrow pulled off the illusion of seeming to dance half asleep (since she is playing a young girl asleep in a chair having a fantasy, this is appropriate), but as she danced with the rose, she came fully awake. Despite most of this ballet being a fantasy sequence, it felt the most realistic of all four works tonight: a simple reenactment of a ball.

Polovtsian Dances (from Prince Igor) was energetic. A first set of women shook it while they danced. A second group was sinuous in veils. The men danced brashly and demonstratively with bows. Overall the work had a bold feel.