Metropolitan Classical Ballet New & Reviews

Ballet lives up to its ambition
Sunday, September 5, 2004

By Wayne Lee Gay
Star-Telegram Classical Music Critic

FORT WORTH - A moment from ballet history provided the high point Saturday night at Bass Performance Hall as Metropolitan Classical Ballet, a low-budget, high-ambition company formerly called Ballet Arlington, continued to make a convincing case for itself as a major player in the area's professional dance scene.

That moment was the centerpiece of a widely varied three-part repertory program, when four principal female dancers performed Jules Joseph Perrot's Pas de Quatre of 1845, a work that established the standard of choreography and virtuosity for ballet in the 19th century. Its influence on Balanchine's neo-romantic works of a century later is obvious, not only in its flow and counterpoint but in its graceful worship of the female form in motion.

Staged here by Metropolitan Classical Ballet co-artistic director Alexander Vetrov, Pas de Quatre provided a beautiful showcase for Olga Pavlova, Marina Goshko, Maria Kudyakova and Sara Marr, not only individually but in ensemble. (Kudos to the Texas Chamber Orchestra and conductor Ron Spigelman for floating smoothly through Cesare Pugni's treacly score.)

The evening opened with Bolshoi choreographer Michail Lavrovsky's Casanova Fantasy, a work created by Lavrovsky (with music of Mozart) for Vetrov in 1996 and here re-staged with Andre Prikhodko in the title role. Lavrovsky clearly was trying to create a showpiece, and the ambition was almost too much. Though on first viewing the work seems top-heavy with ideas, it at least succeeds in capturing the humanity and humor of Mozart's music. Prikhodko as Casanova and Kirill Shulepov as his alter-ego Harlequin made the most of rich roles, turning the piece into a triumph.

The evening closed with a revised version of co-artistic director Paul Mejia's Cowgirls Live Forever, originally set in 1994 with live accompaniment by the Dixie Chicks. Here, the ensemble energetically performed Mejia's appealingly suave combination of ballet and two-step with vocalist Elizabeth Blum and the Johnnie High Band.

GRADE: A-

-- Wayne Lee Gay