A Month of Now

THE DANCE

New York is the dance capital of the world, and May was the month that proved it. During that time, the city played host to four of the world's major dance companies, plus half a dozen lesser ones. In one remarkable evening this week, all three of Lincoln Center's auditoriums were given over to ballet.

The New York City Ballet offered some of the most spectacular dancing--and it was strictly homegrown. During its spring season at the New York State Theater of Lincoln Center, it displayed a repertory of 41 dances, a chiaroscuro of choreographic talent unmatched by any company in the world. A good three-quarters of the works were created by George Balanchine, 64, who uncharacteristically looked into his past by re-creating his first big Broadway hit, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, from the 1936 production On Your Toes.

Bumps & Grinds. Although dated for today's audience--which Balanchine helped educate--Slaughter was a pioneer work that put ballet on Broadway permanently. With high-fidelity hauteur, Suzanne Farrell stormed tantalizingly through the bumps and grinds of the striptease girl, ably partnered by Arthur Mitchell as her jealous hoofer boy friend. The dance was all show-biz flash, far removed from the cool twelve-tone Balanchine ballets in which Farrell has frequently starred.

Another novelty of the City Ballet season was the premiere of Stravinsky: Symphony in C by John Clifford, 20, one of the company's most promising male dancers. While Clifford still has much to learn about the techniques of polishing choreography, the hot wire of raw talent ran through the ballet. His infectious and sportive movements reflected the febrile delirium of young dancers in love with being young, in love with being dancers.

Across the Lincoln Center Plaza at the Metropolitan Opera House, the Royal Ballet presented a striking contrast in style and temperament. The City troupe evokes the high-rising glitter of curtain-wall skyscrapers; the Royal reflects the spacious, gracious luster of Britain's princely mansions. Choreographically, the City Ballet shines best in one-act works. The Royal prefers full evening ballets in the classic tradition, like Kenneth MacMillan's fustian Romeo, and Juliet, Sir Robert Helpmann's production of Swan Lake, and Rudolph Nureyev's Nutcracker.

Freudian Mud. In a special way, it was Nureyev's season. He performed at least three nights a week--most often in tandem with Margot Fonteyn, still a ballerina of faultless style at the age of 49. Nureyev also had a hand in the choreography of three productions that the Royal brought with it. The best were derivative--works restaged from the repertory of his former company, Russia's Kirov Ballet. By far the worst was his muddied Freudian version of The Nutcracker, in which Drosselmeyer, with a Humbert-Humbert lurch, is transformed into the prince who pays court to the Lolita-like moppet Clara. Although a bit heavier than when he first jeteed his way to the West, Rudi proved that he is still the most spectacular male dancer in the world.

The Bolshoi Ballet detailed a 39-star detachment from its massive, 250-strong company to occupy the Metropolitan Opera as soon as the Royal Ballet left. Leading the company was Maya Plisetskaya, a ballerina assoluta of the broad, open Moscow style, which makes the sheer physical act of moving beautifully through space look like a natural way of life. The Russians offered virtuoso, bravo-catching nights of pinpoint turns, rock-steady balances and astronautic high leaps. But there was little to praise in the undernourished bits, snippets and shards of 19th century choreography that provided the vehicles for the Bolshoi's spectacular stars.

Memory & Myth. Modern-Dance Pioneer Martha Graham is as far removed from Bolshoi technique as the cloister is from the athletic field. Probing ever deeper into the recesses of the psyche, she is an explorer of the mental interior, reflecting on the roles of memory, meditation, myth and the male-female relationship. She successfully blended them all at the beginning of her 21-week Manhattan season in a new work called A Time of Snow, a somber retelling of the love and tragedy of Heloise and Abelard. The Graham dancers embraced the angular and knotty choreography with the familiar and loving assurance of craftsmen bred for their task.

The dancers from abroad were a pleasure to watch. But it would be hard to deny that American choreographers and the limber American bodies they employ, better reflect the concerns of the 20th century. Elsewhere, dance is all too often a carefully presented museum; in the U.S., it is one of the swinging arts of now.

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