Metropolitan Classical Ballet New & Reviews

12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Precision motion

DANCE REVIEW: Metropolitan Classical Ballet program varied, perfectly crafted

By MARGARET PUTNAM
Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

FORT WORTH - Metropolitan Classical Ballet's program Monday at Bass Performance Hall was like the miniature music boxes in a jewelry store Christmas display - charming and perfectly crafted, with each piece inhabiting its own universe.

Paul Mejia's Brahms Waltzes shimmered with delicate changes in mood. A corps of six in pale rose swirled in and out, as pianist Alexei Melentiev, seated at one side of the stage, captured nuances of the waltzes from Brahms' Opus 39. The corps gave way to one couple after the other. Long, smooth lifts ended with a woman falling backward in her lover's arms, sometimes with daring, sometimes with a languor so exquisite it seemed like one long sigh.

Eddy Toussaint's Bonjour Brel was very different, utterly French and world-weary, full of angst and longing but also trust and comic relief. Bathed in a warm night light, Olga Pavlova and Alexander Vetrov made the park bench and street lamp a place to rekindle love, express despair and let loose with pure silliness.

The movements were big and bold, like a Picasso canvas, every step expressive of pent-up feeling. "Mon Ami Fernand" finds Mr. Vetrov walking purposely in place before breaking out into soaring leaps and back into the steady, going-nowhere walk. He ends, despondent, on the bench.

But despair has its limits, and with the tender concern of his lover, the two clown around in "Vezoul (The Power of My Wife)." Ms. Pavlova folds over like a box, and Mr. Vetrov pulls her up. With every new collapse, however, the lift gets harder, and Mr. Vetrov ends slumped over her body, exhausted.

And then the display turned again, revealing a witty fantasy - Vladimir Vasiliev's Les Promenades, created for the Bolshoi in 1978.

We have Metropolitan's co-artistic director, Mr. Vetrov, to thank for bringing it here. He has great Bolshoi connections as a former principal dancer and longtime associate of Mr. Vasiliev, another Bolshoi star and former artistic director. Mr. Vasiliev himself came to Fort Worth last week to touch up the ballet.

The conceit is simple: A few dancers are slowly warming up in the studio as Ms. Pavlova fiercely hammers her pointe shoes and others examine 18th-century costumes. Suddenly a figure from the past, decked out in white frock coat and powdered wig, walks in. He is the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, and joined by a violinist and cellist he takes his place at one end of the stage to play music for dance created centuries ago. The dancers don costume pieces (a scarf, the tiny skirt with trim, a black frock coat) as they get caught up in the fantasy.

The dancing is light and precise, with little amusing incidents following one after the other. A man repeats the same bounding step so many times he wears himself out. A woman bats a butterfly net. A man crawls backward with a woman resting perkily on his back.

Best of all were the jaunty and sharply accented pas de deux performance by Mariya Kudyakova and Andrey Prikhodko, and the soulful, otherworldly pas de deux by Ms. Pavlova and Yevgeni Anfinogenov.

Ms. Pavlova, of course, is perfection itself, one of the brightest stars in the universe.