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Alexandra Tomalonis
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Prelude: Movers, Shakers — And Occasional Power

Alexandra Tomalonis
Special to the Washington Post
September 7, 2002; Page C3

The Kennedy Center's Prelude Festival is one of the best ideas yet from Michael Kaiser, the center's president, for introducing Washington audiences to Washington art. At the Terrace Theater Thursday, the Washington Ballet got into the spirit of things by presenting a sampler program with a little something for everyone: a neoclassical Balanchine ballet, an excerpt from a work by Choo-San Goh, the company's late resident choreographer, and two pop dances from Nacho Duato and Trey McIntyre, two of today's hot choreographers. The dancers looked terrific, as they always do in McIntyre's "Blue Until June," created for the company nearly two years ago. One couldn't ask more of them. They shake and twist and shimmy and slump with enormous confidence and energy to a tape of Etta James singing the blues. Much of the movement is inventive, especially a duet for two men who've just discovered each other, and a slinky, staggering solo for a man who's had at least "One for the Road," danced by Jason Hartley with a deft, insouciant brilliance.

As a dance, though, "Blue Until June" doesn't go anywhere. There's no development of either theme or movement; each number follows the next like an endless music video. Two people in agonized combat one moment happily dance with different people five minutes later, yet the main point of the dance seems less about partner-swapping than just making sure everyone has something to do. The dances for the men are more interesting than those for the women, who use their pointe shoes for two reasons: either to stab the ground when they're angry, or to grow suddenly taller. Otherwise, they might as well wear mukluks.

If "Blue" is a shallow pond, Duato's "Na Floresta" (to music of Heitor Villa-Lobos and Wagner Tisso) is barely a puddle. Duato recycles modern dance movements -- a contraction or nine here, a cruciform lift there -- completely divorced from the emotional contexts that gave them birth. There's a lot of running and rolling around on the floor, too, but to little purpose, as Duato's movement vocabulary is about as varied as a turtle's.

There's plenty of movement interest in Balanchine's edgy, jazzy, fast-as-hell "Allegro Brilliante," but it seemed little more than a classroom exercise Thursday. Perhaps it was the small stage and the tinny, taped Tchaikovsky, or perhaps it was opening-night nerves, but the dancers looked stiff, and delivered the work step by step without seeming to have a sense of the ballet as a whole.

Michele Jimenez, who danced the ballerina role, is charming, but doesn't yet know how to build a character, how to vary her dancing, discover something new in each solo, make her part interesting to an audience. Runqiao Du, who's become familiar with Balanchine's style through his work with Suzanne Farrell the past few seasons, caught the ballet's sharpness admirably.

The pas de deux from Choo-San Goh's "Momentum," sleek and mysterious when danced in the full ballet, fell rather flat without it. The program will be repeated this evening.