YEAR IN REVIEW 1997: PERFORMING-ARTS

DANCE Lincoln Kirstein (see OBITUARIES), one of the few supermen behind the establishment of ballet in the U.S. and whose death darkened the beginning of 1996, might have been amused by the frequency with which the word ballet, if not always the expected product, was heard during the year. In and around New York City, audiences saw companies from around the world, all promising ballet. Les Ballets Africains, one of those groups that did not deliver ballet as people had come to expect it, offered instead a heady and thrilling dose of music and dance from Guinea. In a similar vein, Companie Azanie, an African-based troupe from Lyon, France, showed a slightly more intimate but equally impressive kind of performance. The flamenco-based National Ballet of Spain, from Madrid, and the expressionist-dance-theatre-based Le Ballet C de la B, from Belgium, included few of the accoutrements normally associated with ballet. No single company performed with standard-setting consistency in 1996. The major U.S. troupes, New York City Ballet (NYCB) and American Ballet Theatre (ABT), each had runs more dutiful than inspired. Male dancers tended to dominate the productions. Both NYCB and ABT featured George Balanchine's Apollo, a 20th-century classic famous for its central male role. At ABT, Vladimir Malakhov, Julio Bocca, Guillaume Graffin, and Jos Manuel Carreo all danced the title role; at NYCB, Ethan Steifel, Peter Boal, Nilas Martins, and Igor Zelensky each performed. None of NYCB's new ballets did more than pass their time in the repertoire they hoped to enrich; ABT's new production of Ben Stevenson's evening-long Cinderella proved thin on actual dancing. One gratifying exception to the undistinguished new ballet roster came from ABT with Twyla Tharp's The Elements, a wildly wonderful suite of numbers electrifyingly danced to an old French master, Jean-Fry Rebel. By year's end the protean Tharp was off on her own with a nationally touring triple bill simply called Tharp! and filled with often effortless virtuosities. An exhibit called "Classic Black" at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts documented the history of African-Americans in U.S. ballet. In the area of ballerina talent, ABT continued to claim its radiant Julie Kent and its irrepressible Paloma Herrera. At NYCB, where such ballerina talent had lately been lacking, the company showcased the impressive gifts of 20-year-old Maria Kowroski, while the up-and-coming Miranda Weese continued to grow and blossom. With strongly danced weeklong seasons at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and at New York's City Center, Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) proved to be a troupe unusually strong on expert female dancers. Led by a knife-sharp Patricia Barker, a lithe, willowy Louise Nadeau, and a young comer named Carrie Imler, PNB's season left strong and winning impressions. Dance Theatre of Harlem offered an extensive repertoire at the Kennedy Center, including a chicly postmodernist premiere from Alonzo King called Ground. Miami (Fla.) City Ballet's strengths were revealed in a special Balanchine/Stravinsky program the company took to the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival near Lee, Mass. NYCB dancer and promising novice choreographer Christopher Wheeldon gave the annual performances of the School of American Ballet a charming new ballet called Danses Bohmiennes. Departures and transitions at the level of artistic director were experienced by a number of U.S. and Canadian companies in 1996. William Whitener settled in at the State Ballet of Missouri, while Peter Anastos left the Cincinnati (Ohio) Ballet. Patricia Wilde announced her departure from Pittsburgh (Pa.) Ballet Theatre, and Terry Orr was hired as her replacement. Boston Ballet announced the appointment of gifted former Royal Danish Ballet dancer Sorella Englund as company ballet mistress. Sonia Arova and Thor Sutowski of Alabama's Ballet South did a farewell tour by taking their moderately ambitious production of Swan Lake to Brooklyn (N.Y.) College. Soon thereafter it was announced that ABT's gifted Wes Chapman would take over at Ballet South. Kirk Peterson of the Hartford Ballet continued to advance his Connecticut troupe with an award-winning performance by Carlos Molina in the New York International Ballet Competition and with a half-million-dollar grant to create a Native American Nutcracker in 1997. The San Francisco Ballet, on a vagabond 18-month circuit owing to the renovation of its home theatre, toured widely and successfully, even if it hardly had time to introduce substantial new repertoire. The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago toured as well, including a dutiful run at the Kennedy Center and much-maligned appearances in London. Feld Ballets/NY continued and expanded its popular "Kids Dance" programs, showcasing pupils of the Feld school. Elsewhere, silver anniversaries were a trend. The Trisha Brown Dance Company celebrated its 25th year at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's "Next Wave Festival" (NWF). Both the innovative and ever-youthful Pilobolus and the ever-disjointed and eccentric Garth Fagan Dance celebrated turning 25, as did the Hartford Ballet. Ten-year milestones came for Ohio's Tom Evert Dance Company and for New York's Stephen Petronio Dance Company. Some of the year's most beautiful and mesmerizing dancing came from the four-legged stars of Bartabas's Zingaro Equestrian Theater. Offering Chimre at the NWF, the one-ring wonder of appearing and disappearing dancing horses and elegant riders created a spectacle, tinged with Indian music, that was unforgettable. Other less-spectacular foreign visitors included the shiningly clean Paris Opra Ballet, a cosmetically good-looking Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, a sweetly youthful Ballet Ullate, a bland Rambert Dance Company, a fulsome Joaqun Corts (Pasin Gitana), a thunderingly percussive "Riverdance," and two nicely schooled troupes from Italy--MaggioDanza di Firenze, directed by American punkstress Karole Armitage, and Aterballeto. Two companies with Bolshoi monikers proved mildly controversial. One, called "Stars of the Bolshoi Ballet," met legal problems because its dancers were actually only former Bolshoi dancers; the other, the Bolshoi Ballet itself, charged wildly high ticket prices ($300 top) for appearances in Las Vegas, Nev., and Los Angeles. The legendary Bolshoi ballerina Maya Plisetskaya performed in New York City amid a gala program of star-turn ballet numbers. A thrilling Argentine Tango 2 dazzled with its switchblade legwork and intense partnering. Kazuo Ohno, Japan's grand old man of buto, was celebrated with a performance and film series at the Japan Society. In Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, dancer-choreographer Savion Glover (see BIOGRAPHIES) impressed Broadway with his unique style of tap dancing, called "hitting." Except for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which became a kind of centrepiece to the inaugural Lincoln Center Festival (LCF) with a gaudy world premiere by Judith Jamison to a specially commissioned Wynton Marsalis score, most of the so-called moderns had a lower profile in 1996. Neither the Paul Taylor Dance Company nor the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) had full-scale New York seasons. MCDC did have prominence at the LCF with the East Coast premiere of Ocean. Taylor produced a wonderful video recording of three of his pop music dances, slyly called The Wrecker's Ball. The affecting Isadora Duncan Repertory Ensemble opened the Kennedy Center's two-year celebration of American dance. Mark Morris's dance company offered New York City his lovely childlike staging of Orfeo ed Euridice. The Dayton (Ohio) Contemporary Dance Company made an impressive New York appearance, largely because of its sterling dancers. To cap the NWF, Donald Byrd performed his urban Christmas dance, called The Harlem Nutcracker. The National Ballet of Canada (NBC) went through a changing of the guard in 1996. Newly appointed director James Kudelka took over as Karen Kain announced a year of farewell dancing and Gizella Witkowsky gave a farewell performance. NBC's history was documented in Power to Rise, a scrupulously researched account of the company by James Neufeld. A grossly uneven three-part historical video series called Footnotes, narrated by former NBC dancer Frank Augustyn, brought less honour to Canadian ballet. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet's year included performing Rudi van Dantzig's own Romeo and Juliet, one of the ballet's lesser-known versions. Les Grands Ballets Canadiens included in its year a company premiere of Antony Tudor's elegiac The Leaves Are Fading. Videos of interest included five additional releases of The Balanchine Library from Nonesuch Records and a five-part compilation called The World of Alwin Nikolais. The New York Film Festival included a penetrating documentary by Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson, Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse. Among the books published in 1996 were No Intermissions: The Life of Agnes de Mille by Carol Easton, Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance by Jennifer Dunning, The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company by Sasha Anawalt, and Nijinsky's Crime Against Grace: Reconstruction Score of the Original Choreography for Le Sacre du Printemps by Millicent Hodson. Besides Kirstein's, the year's deaths included Gene Kelly, Ulysses Dove, Chris Komar, Paul Draper, Ludmilla Chiriaeff, and Juliet Prowse. (See OBITUARIES.) Larry Grenier, William Douglas, Dale Harris, Bert Terborgh, Calvin Shawn Landers, Miguel Godreau, Robert Ellis Dunn, and Philip Jerry also died during 1996. (ROBERT GRESKOVIC)