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Alexandra Tomalonis
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Ballet Theatre of Maryland

By Alexandra Tomalonis
Special to The Washington Post
October 14, 2002

At a time when ballet companies routinely commission new works from modern dancers claiming there just aren’t any classical choreographers out there, why have they overlooked Peter Anastos? Ballet Theatre of Maryland turned to Anastos after the death of its founder, Edward Stewart, last summer, and he’s given the company three ballets that would grace any repertory.

Anastos is best known as the founder of the sassy drag troupe, Les Ballets Trockaderos de Monte Carlo; he was its beloved prima under the name Olga Tchikaboomskaya, for years. But he’s also a master choreographer, and BTM’s program Saturday night at the Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in Annapolis showed his range.

The jazzy “Rhapsody in Blue” was a world premiere. With than a nod to Balanchine’s “Rubies,” Anastos created a genial romp for a leading couple and three trios that looked like the cast of “Rubies” on a night out at the local piano bar. The dancers caught the style perfectly, though the technical demands were a bit of a stretch.

Technical limitations showed, too, in Anastos’s languid, lyrical “Clair de Lune,” a ballet for three couples that’s pretty without being sappy. But the dancers had a triumph in his witty “Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet,” a work that skewers those ballets where the dancers moon around to Chopin (and was all the funnier on this evening of piano ballets). This is ballet as mortal combat, with the piano both obstacle and lethal weapon, and the dancers nailed every joke, pratfall and flex-footed, pouty stomp.