Experimental Exploratorium activates awe at 40

Experimental Exploratorium activates awe at 40: "A museum of ideas and playthings, of serious thinking and sheer aesthetics, of raucous shrieks of delight and quiet moments of discovery, the Exploratorium has striven to be more than just a typical science museum, to represent a culture of thinking differently - a place where art and science are not separate categories, but two sides of the same idea: comprehending the world around us.

Nowadays, it's nearly impossible to find a museum or educational institution that isn't employing the buzzwords 'interactivity' or 'hands-on.' But before Frank Oppenheimer opened the doors at the Exploratorium in the fall of 1969, museums were places with 'Do Not Touch' signs posted everywhere. Oppenheimer (the younger brother of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer) believed in learning by doing, in staying endlessly curious and in delighting in what the world had to offer, and much of the character of the Exploratorium is the thoroughly unpretentious character of the founder himself."

Performing Diaspora Festival - beyond tradition

Performing Diaspora Festival - beyond tradition: "It was the Sufi poet Rumi who asked, 'When will you begin that long journey into yourself?' The 13 artists of CounterPulse's Performing Diaspora Festival, which begins next weekend have been on that journey for a year, and now dance audiences will have a chance to see snapshots of their trip. This ambitious new festival - which brings together artists from the Bay Area, Fresno and the Los Angeles/Pasadena area - has been as much about the process of creating the works as about the produced pieces that will be on the stage over the next three weekends."

'HallowScreen': Classic spooky Disney cartoons

'HallowScreen': Classic spooky Disney cartoons: "We're looking for the new Walt Disney Family Museum in the Presidio, and after driving around the Main Post, we spot a pleasant-looking guy waving at us from the porch of a red brick building, indistinguishable from the other red brick buildings next to it, save for the discreet white sign."

Alonzo King's 'Refraction' dazzling jazz ballet

There's a whiff of pensive yearning, even nostalgia, to 'Refraction,' which Alonzo King's Lines Ballet premiered on Friday night at the Yerba Buena Center's Novellus Theater. Casual intensity weaves in and out constantly - a couple may enter hand in hand, but their relationship is as likely to drift away as coalesce into confrontation. Strolling gives way to fitful drives across the stage, paralleling the score by jazz pianist Jason Moran - who accompanied the nine dancers live with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Dance Review: Trolley Dances a San Francisco Treat

Bright blue skies favored the sixth annual Trolley Dances, the itinerant series of performances in various sites along the J-Church line from Dolores to Balboa parks on Saturday and Sunday.

Most people on the first tour - there were half a dozen excursions each day - seemed to know all about the event, but a few were drawn up the hill to the statue of Miguel Hidalgo by the music of Mexican folklorico dancers Rosamaria Garcia and Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos Jr.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Alonzo King Lines Ballet season to premiere

The conversation is quiet but characteristically intense as Alonzo King and his dancers try to work out the shape of the rehearsal periods for the day. It seems that the creative drive and the relentless demands of Lines Ballet's schedule have bumped up against the physical realities for the nine company members - no one wants to interrupt the momentum as the company races to create two world premiere works, but there are corporeal limitations to consider, too.
Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Plus also check out the sidebar, What other artists say about Alonzo King

96 Hours Family: Petaluma Pumpkin patches

In the pristine world of Facebook's Farmville, nothing is ever dusty, there's no smell of manure and the pumpkins only take eight hours to grow. With Halloween fast approaching, though, the time is ripe to detach from the computers and take the kids out to pick pumpkins for real.

This weekend, you don't have to brave traffic jams headed to Half Moon Bay's Art & Pumpkin Festival to get good jack-o'-lantern material. Consider, instead, heading to some of the working farms of Petaluma, like Peterson's Farm or Andersen's Organic Vegetable Stand and Pumpkin Patch.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Dance Review: Smuin Ballet's "Soon These Two Worlds"

A genuine sweetness pervades Amy Seiwert's carefree new ballet, "Soon These Two Worlds," which Smuin Ballet premiered Friday night at the Palace of Fine Arts.

Perhaps it sounds dismissive to call something "sweet" these days, but Seiwert's latest is a genuinely upbeat diversion that melds solidly structured energy with a fresh, sunny disposition.

Lit with a dusky, afternoon glow by David K.H. Elliott, the six couples have the vibe of companionable friends, perhaps celebrating after a long workday - individuals make their own interpretations of Seiwert's complex steps, but everyone is dancing to the same purpose.

Although there's a hint of African influence in Christine Darch's vibrantly striped tights and skirts - which elicit a pleasant dizziness as the dancers twirl, like watching the slots of a zoetrope go 'round - and an unmistakable African dance flavor to the rounded arm swoops and hip accents, the overall effect of the choreography is 100 percent Seiwert.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

96 Hours: The Blessing of the Animals

Four legs, two legs, Episcopalian, agnostic, furry, feathered or scaled - everyone is welcome at Grace Cathedral's blessing of the animals, an annual celebration of the guy for whom San Francisco is named, St. Francis of Assisi.

Although this favorite traditional ceremony traces back to the fourth century, when St. Anthony of the Desert allowed animals into the church to be blessed - most churches now celebrate the event on Oct. 4, the feast day of St. Francis, well-known to Christians for his love of animals. After naming him the patron saint of ecology in 1979, Pope John Paul II wrote that he hoped St. Francis' example would, "help us to keep ever alive a sense of 'fraternity' with all those good and beautiful things which Almighty God has created. And may he remind us of our serious obligation to respect and watch over them with care, in light of that greater and higher fraternity that exists within the human family."

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Bill T. Jones finds inspiration in Lincoln

The historiography and legacy of the Abraham Lincoln phenomenon is at the heart of Bill T. Jones' latest work, "Fondly Do We Hope ... Fervently Do We Pray," which his company performs at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts beginning Thursday. More than two years in the making, the work is a commission, by Illinois' Ravinia Festival for the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, but it's also a project that has grown close to Jones' heart.

Q: You've talked about the struggle between the vision of Lincoln you had as a 5-year-old versus that of your older, more cynical self. How did that factor into "Fondly"?

A: Initially, I thought the approach was going to be prosecutorial, to challenge the theory of history. Let's challenge this great man, whom modern scholarship has revealed to be definitely just a man of his era and a politician to boot. I thought it was going to be about finding the person that I loved as a child, through what I now know about him as a man. And I found ultimately - after reading and working and thinking quite a bit - that he deserves my respect and, I would say in a more emotional way, he deserves my heart.

Read more on the SF Chronicle website.
Photo: Todd Heisler / NYT

Dance Review: Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in "Other Suns"

At the heart of "Other Suns (A Trilogy)," the thoroughly engrossing work which the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and China's Guangdong Modern Dance Company premiered at Yerba Buena Center's Novellus Theater on Thursday night, is the exploration of what it means to be "different" or the "same."

Far from being a mere cultural odyssey, or superficial pasting together of disparate items, Jenkins' work - set to a peripatetic original score by Paul Dresher, who led his musical ensemble in the pit - seeks something larger and more profound.

Part one - a section of the work that Jenkins showed to San Francisco audiences in 2007 - opens with designer Alexander V. Nichols' stunning visual space: Banks of lights across the upper and lower reaches of the stage frame dozens of bare lamps suspended like raindrops overhead, without the watery set piece seen in the 2007 showing.

Under the canopy of light, bodies thrust forward, push and pull against each other, evoking longing, daring, missed opportunities and chance encounters. Dancers off on their own suddenly and satisfyingly interlock in skillfully distributed groups. When Emily Hite launches herself off the feet of another dancer, her brief assisted flight is exhilarating.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Margaret Jenkins, Guangdong troupe pair up

Veteran choreographer Margaret Jenkins and her dancers join forces with China's Guangdong Modern Dance Company for "Other Suns," an intersection of cultures and ideas, which premieres Thursday at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

For Jenkins, it has been a process of more than two years that has taken her company of eight dancers to Guangzhou, China, in 2008 and back home as they worked on the tripartite work, which encompasses a section created by each company and a collaborative finale. As she prepared for the Chinese dancers' arrival in San Francisco, a moment in the quiet studios on Eighth and Folsom streets found her in a characteristically reflective mood.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Reality star Payne dances her way to 'Fame'

Bubbly and unpretentious, Kherington Payne comes across as exactly the same fresh-faced girl who charmed fans of the reality show "So You Think You Can Dance" with her exhilarating Viennese waltz, spitfire krumping and, of course, the impassioned Mia Michaels number with Stephen "Twitch" Boss known as the "bed routine."

Growing up in Southern California, Payne took to competition, in the dance studio and on the sports field. A dancer since age 2, Payne got most of her early training at the Dance Precisions studio in Yorba Linda (Orange County), but she was also an avid soccer player in school.

"It's so weird to say that I loved both so much, because how you do both? But dance and soccer were just equally important to me," she says. "I would go to soccer practice and then run to dance in my soccer clothes and, sometimes, even dance in my soccer clothes. I loved both so much that I was willing to run from soccer games to dance competitions all weekend. I was just a girl without a social life."

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Mark Morris Dance Group's ethereal 'Visitation'

In a world of dizzying and doubt-inducing complexity, there's something refreshing about the kind of direct and lovely simplicity that marks "Visitation," which the Mark Morris Dance Group performed to open the Cal Performances season at Zellerbach Hall on Thursday night.

Seemingly suspended in a state of expectancy, "Visitation" (set to Beethoven's sonata No. 4 for cello (Wolfram Koessel) and piano (Colin Fowler) is suffused with a kind of intimate anticipation. Groups break into pairs, dancers shift partners, intermingling duets for Joe Bowie, Noah Vinson, Michelle Yard and Rita Donahue pulse between sharp and soft, but throughout there's an ecstatic impulse in repeated arched backs and faces upturned toward the heavens as if hunting for salvation. And at the heart of the piece is a pensive Maile Okamura - a kind of outlier, though not an outsider to the group of nine dancers. Okamura invests the Beethoven score with a delicate yet passionate touch and it's infectiously delightful to watch her take to the air, hair flying across her face.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Day of the Dead workshops

Although the Day of the Dead is not until Nov. 1, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts is already working on elaborate decorations and altars that mark the celebrations of the colorful Mexican holiday. Joining forces with the San Francisco Symphony, which continues an annual tradition of a family concert on the Day of the Dead, the Mission Cultural Center is playing host to a series of hands-on workshops over the next few weeks that give kids the chance to work on large-scale community art projects, which will be exhibited in the lobby of Davies Symphony Hall in the weeks leading up to the holiday.

One of the three workshops has kids and their parents making giant animal sculptures inspired by the creatures that appear in Camille Saint-Saëns' "The Carnival of the Animals," which will also be on the program for the Nov 1. concert at Davies Symphony Hall. Workshop instructor Colette Crutcher, a local artist whose own exuberant mosaic mural "Tonantsin Renace" graces a wall at 16th and Sanchez streets, already has a menagerie going strong in the Mission Cultural Center studios.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

S.F. Ballet preps for takeoff to China

"Here! Here!" shouts Lola de Avila, as the flock of swans runs a tight circle around Vanessa Zahorian and Ruben Martin Cintas in the studios of San Francisco Ballet. "Run to here!"

The swans head for the studio's double doors, and soloist Anthony Spaulding, who's playing von Rothbart, helpfully warns, "They're coming out this way. I wouldn't want you to get trampled!"

Dancer after dancer streams out into the hallway, with de Avila - the associate director of the Ballet School - hot on the heels of the last one.

"Better!" she says warmly. "I'm still screaming, but that was much better."

Breathing hard, the dancers head back into the studio, where the artistic team is already in action, dispensing corrections. Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson is giving Spaulding notes on how to make his brooding Rothbart more owlish, ballet master Betsy Erickson is working with the little cygnets, and Bruce Sansom - a newly appointed assistant to the artistic director - is coaching more loft into Zahorian's jumps.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Dance center celebrates 20 years in S.F.

Worlds collide at the corner of Seventh and Market streets. Across the United Nations Plaza is a weekly farmers' market. Up the street is the futuristic Federal Building. On the corner there's a check-cashing joint and a Chinese takeout place. Above it all, behind the ornate terra-cotta decorations on the 1909 Odd Fellows Building, is the Alonzo King Lines Dance Center, home to thousands of dancers and this year celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Founded in February 1989, the then San Francisco Dance Center - which moved into the upper floors of the Odd Fellows Grand Lodge in 2002 - quickly became one of the busiest locations for dancers and choreographers on the West Coast.

A walk down the slightly grim, fluorescent-lit corridor takes you past an extended frieze of dancers stretching as the echoes of piano accompaniment drift through the halls. But step into any studio and you're suddenly drenched in natural light that pours into abundantly airy spaces from the high, arched windows.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Scottish Highland Gathering and Games

Men tossing tree trunks, hurling 16-pound hammers, sheepdogs a-leaping, Scottish dancers dancing, bagpipers piping, drummers drumming - no, it's not the 12 days of Christmas, it's the two days of the 144th Scottish Highland Gathering and Games, which takes place this Labor Day weekend at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton.

"There is literally going to be something for everyone," says Floyd Busby, spokesman for the Caledonian Club of San Francisco, which has organized this annual event since 1866.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

96 Hours: Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble

The strains of Latin jazz will heat up the city streets when the Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble plays this Sunday in Union Square as part of the ongoing free Jewels in the Square performances. Far from a kiddie show, this group of about 15 young musicians, who range in age from 10 to 18 years old, display a serious professionalism.

Founded in 2001 by Bay Area bandleader and San Francisco State University faculty member John Calloway along with Arturo Riera and Sylvia Ramirez, the ensemble boasts a resume that any professional would envy, including opening for jazz greats such as the Cuban bassist Israel "Cachao" López, and jamming with the likes of noted pianist Chuchito Valdés.

"It's quite an opportunity for a student musician," Ramirez says. "We are really unique - we've been around since 2001 and have never charged the students to participate. We recruit from all over the community, especially public schools, where kids may have a lot of natural talent and some training, but they might never have had access to private instruction in music."

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

96 Hours Family: Take Flight for Kids

For a kid who can't walk, how about the opportunity to fly?

The Take Flight for Kids festival, which takes off Saturday at the Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose, aims to open up new worlds for kids with special needs, who are physically or cognitively challenged or from at-risk groups, by giving them a chance to experience flying - not just by riding in a plane or helicopter but also by taking the controls of the plane.

Sponsored by the Valley Medical Center Foundation Project and the San Jose Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 62, the flights are the experience of a lifetime, says organizer Dean McCully, and for many of the 200 or so lucky kids - who go up with their families - it might be the first time they've ever been in a plane.

"We put the kids in the co-pilot seat and when the pilot says, 'OK, the plane is yours,' they take over," McCully explains, admitting that the pilot, of course, doesn't take his or her hands off the main controls. But for a few minutes, the kids are able to direct the plane and feel what it's like to command the craft.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Riding the Wave

WestWave Dance Festival
Cowell Theater, San Francisco
July 12, 2009

By the time we got to the Cowell Theater, full of anticipation for the 2009 WestWave Dance Festival, the line stretched far into the parking lot of the Fort Mason Center making the distance between us and the seats of the Cowell Theater feel like they were miles away. Patiently determined theatergoers, however, looked undaunted by the 20 minute wait (at five minutes to curtain) and box office mixups and by the time the show finally got underway half an hour late, the mood was unaccountably good-humored despite the obstacles.

(photo of Amy Seiwert by Andy Mogg)

In the long foggy San Francisco summers, WestWave Dance Festival's concentrated showing of local choreographers has long been an indispensable annual event for Bay Area dance aficionados. So it was happy news that despite tight financial times, producer Joan Lazarus was forging ahead with the festival this year, albeit in a shortened version -- one night only and with a limited number of companies participating.

Some of the work has been seen before, but worth a second--or third-- viewing. Katie Faulkner's seductive film "Loom" which traces the threads of a relationship played out between Faulkner and Private Freeman made an appropriately moody lead-in to "Until We Know for Sure," which the same two dancers performed live to snippets of music drawn from Maria Silva and Alfredo Duarte, among others. Floating in patches of light, Faulkner and Freeman melded one movement into the next with an ease and fluidity that still managed to surprise the eye with its impulsiveness. It doesn't hurt that the both of them have technical strength to burn--Faulkner's stability in a deep plie on half-pointe was mesmerizing, and Freeman's steady and attentive partnering was the linchpin on which the entire encounter turned.

Linchpins also leapt to mind while watching Amy Seiwert's latest "Response to Change" in which the choreography turns on split-second catches and fiendishly speedy interlocking of limbs. Dressed in purple tunics and t-shirts, Im'ij-re's four couples (Robin Cornwell, Vanessa Thiessen, Sharon Wehner, Kathi Martuza, Kevin Delany, Koichi Kubo, Matthew Linzer and John Speed Orr) work with seemed --given the score by Mason Bates entitled "The Life of Birds"--a fitful birdlike theme, although the demands of secure pointework seemed to make some of the women slightly cautious at first, though their confidence seemed to blossom as the piece developed, and one could only appreciate Thiessen's bullet-like pluck-- a pleasant counterpoint to Martuza's matter-of-factly, almost slyly, delivered supple extensions.

Also on the program was the premiere of Manuelito Biag's "Terra Incognita," a fractal of a dance that moved through solos, duets and trios for Biag, Kara Davis and Alex Ketley accompanied by song fragments composed and sung by Faulkner on guitar. On first view, "Terra Incognita" looks disjointed, dancers sussing out admittedly beautiful phrases of movement in a set dominated by bare lights and chairs. Davis and Ketley play out a tender pas de deux, Biag dances a solo with weighty moves that recall tai-chi, Davis flies about the space in an impassioned solo like a wild woman-- but still, this looks a bit like a dance being workshopped and still in progress. Nevertheless, as phrases of movement and music repeat and reassemble in ever-growing patterns a certain kind of organic order emerges. Even if the whole never seems to really cohere into a complete statement, it was worthwhile, both for the concept and the execution.

"Terra incognita" could well have described "*FLASH REAL* a Song Dance Cycle" Kim Epifano's mystifying and oddly frustrating journey through two years' worth of work which opened the evening. Accompanied live by composer and didgeridoo player Stephen Kent -- who also created the sound bed for this first of a multi-part work-- Epifano sang, swooshed and flew about the stage, drawing props and clothing Mary Poppins-like out of a capacious suitcase and seemingly menaced by a dangling crystal chandelier that loomed over the whole procedure like the sword of Damocles. I'm a bit of a skeptic at heart and any piece with a lot of running in circles tends to make my eyes narrow, but "*FLASH REAL*" was simply perplexing. Even though I had some awareness of Epifano's journeys to China, Tibet and Ethiopia, and followed her recent work, I couldn't fathom at all where she was taking us, although the collaboration with Kent looks like an avenue worth exploring.

Whether "Wake", the title of LEVYdance's offering on the WestWave program, refers to awakening, or to a funeral is unclear, although this lengthy duet for Brooke Gessay and Scott Marlowe felt as though it tended far more toward the sepulchral. As esoteric as I found "Wake," though, it's maybe a little unfair to try to re-evaluate this 2008 work based on this performance. Solemnly slow motion hip swivels and shoulder rolls were jarred out of focus by an obviously distracted and bored toddler who ran about the aisles and was finally removed shrieking from the auditorium. While I couldn't condone the impulse that led her parents to take her to what was obviously an adult event that was just too long for her, I also couldn't help but sympathize with her.

The evening closed on a similarly dark note with Patrick Makuakane's "From the last to the first," performed by the hula troupe Na Lei Hulu i Ka Wekiu. Beginning with a wailing lamentation and moving through somber ground through traditional dances to broadly curvacious choreography set to Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," this was hula seen in a serious mold. Unfortunately, although the power of the group and the sway of the mass of dancers onstage, in another context, might have been alluring and provocative, I was hoping not to leave the theater so depressed.

96 Hours Family: Grind for the Green's Eco-music conference

With President Obama pushing to create millions of new "green-collar" jobs, being eco-conscious might not just be a good idea, it may become a lucrative one as well. But buying organic, starting your own garden and living the sustainable life can be expensive, and for many people, it might feel as though the green movement is a nice but unavailable crusade that has all but passed them by.

"While certain parts of the Bay Area are very eco-conscious, for people in some parts of the city, like Bayview-Hunters Point, they just don't have access to some of the resources, the technology or information that would allow them to live in an ecologically conscious, self-sustaining way," says Ambessa Cantave, who with wife Zakiya Harris founded Grind for the Green in 2007, an organization dedicated to bringing ideas on how young people can shape a green future for themselves and practical resources for sustainable living to underserved communities.

Read more in the SF Chronicle site.

Queer Tango throws out the leader follower rules

"Where the man leads the lady must follow," wails one of the women in the cult classic "Strictly Ballroom."

And indeed it might appear that the social dance milieu - where the gender roles of a male leader and a female follower are seemingly built into the structure of the dance - is at odds with modern life in which gender roles are less confined. But in the world of Argentine tango, a growing community of dancers is looking to break the strictures of traditional gender roles.

Queer tango - which has become popular with festivals in Hamburg, Berlin, Stockholm and, of course, Buenos Aires - is not just for gay and lesbian dancers, but rather a more all-encompassing term for tango that embraces ambiguity in the leader-follower system. This not only allows dancers to take on nontraditional roles, but also gives them license to switch roles back and forth while dancing. San Francisco plays host to a regular milonga, or tango party, called QueerTango Cafe, on the second Sunday of each month, and now organizers Amy Little, Winter Held and Auriel are co-producing the first International QueerTango Festival to be held in the United States beginning Wednesday and running through the weekend.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

96 Hours Family: Reflections at the Exploratorium

Kids tend to rush around the Exploratorium, but the young boy whizzing around me stops short with an impressed "Whoa!" He stares at the life-size upside-down image of himself that has appeared in front of a giant spherical mirror and experimentally waves his hand at himself, mesmerized by how real his doppelganger appears.

Once used by NASA for a flight simulator, the enormous mirror comes to the Exploratorium via the Chabot Space and Science Center, and it greets - and entrances - visitors to the museum's latest exhibition, "Reflections."

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Review: Sylvia at American Ballet Theatre

Michele Wiles and Roberto Bolle in Sylvia. Photo: MIRA.

Sylvia at American Ballet Theatre, Metropolitan Opera House, July 1, 2009

Sylvia: Michelle Wiles, Aminta: Roberto Bolle, Eros: Daniil Simkin,

Orion: Cory Stearns, Diana: Kristi Boone
Conductor: David LaMarche

Gods and goddesses are at play in American Ballet Theatre's lavishly appointed production of Frederick Ashton's Sylvia, and to judge from the reception given the ballet by the audience at its Metropolitan Opera House run last week, this lovely work with its charming score by Leo Delibes is still much beloved, even after falling out of the active repertoire for decades until the Royal Ballet's 2004 revival.

Although I grew up on the company, I've only been able to see ABT intermittently over the past several years, and so I've lost track of the newest dancers, and can no longer reliably tell you on which corps members you should train an experienced eye. I can, however, report that glamour remains despite Nina Ananiashvili's recent farewell to the company, and there are some promising dancers whose performances stand out, even to the occasional viewer.

Among the handsome transplants to the company is the Italian star danseur Roberto Bolle, who danced the role of the shepherd Aminta who falls in love with the titular huntress, played on Wednesday evening by Michelle Wiles. Bolle has had the opportunity to dance the role at the Royal Ballet (he partners Darcey Bussell on the DVD that's available commercially) and has obviously benefited from the coaching at the institution where Ashton created Sylvia.

He makes a gallant partner for Wiles. Both are tall dancers, and though I had the sense that the Ashton choreography forced both of them to sacrifice the length of their lines in favor of getting all the steps in, Bolle presented Wiles to her best advantage in their pas de deux.

Michele Wiles and Roberto Bolle in Sylvia. Photo: Gene Schiavone.

Wiles is a technically superior dancer, which must be-- and here I'm only guessing-- why she was assigned one of the most taxing of Ashton's roles. The choreographer jam-packs the evening with solos for the ballerina (Margot Fonteyn in the original production) and doesn't stint on the technique--a fusillade of hops on pointe, peripatetic jumps that coyly switch directions on a dime, light little gargouillades that seem to skim across the stage. And yet, although Wiles manages to execute, one can't help noticing that it's a struggle.

At this point, I hasten to add that the above criticism is not necessarily what I would describe as a technical deficiency. However, it does, in my mind, open an insight into why Ashton often looks fussy, and even dated. Pointe work--and more specifically the use of the feet in pointe shoes-- has, I think, changed vastly in the nearly 57 years since the ballet premiered.

Nowadays, particularly as the technology of the pointe shoe has changed, dancers are more apt to spring in the Russian fashion or even jump onto pointe. Shoes--like the Gaynor Mindens that are so popular for their ability to hold the dancer securely on pointe--are nonetheless difficult to hold in the right position when it comes to performing hops en pointe. And because the current fashion is to pop onto pointe and use the shank as a prop, rather than relying solely on the muscles of the feet to hold the position on pointe, the ability to rise slowly through the foot, or smoothly and articulately roll down to flat are out of style. The result is that Ashton's steps, which demand complex changes of weight and quick jumps, mixed with fluid eleves onto pointe, tend to look jerky, sometimes unsteady and even perplexingly capricious.

Wiles barrels through the role, and in a certain sense her attack and damn-the-torpedoes approach fits the idea of the fiercely independent huntress Sylvia. When she flies across the stage into Bolle's arms, it's as much a testament to Sylvia's spirit of derring-do as her besotted love for Aminta. Delicacy is not her strength however --her legs have a gorgeous length to them, but those bourrees looked a bit too sluggish--and ultimately Wiles' Sylvia is less beguiling than brassy.

In general, the men seemed to fare better at managing the Ashton style. Cory Stearns took to the role of the evil hunter Orion with a zest that launched powerful turns. As Eros, Daniil Simkin very nearly stole the show, easily navigating the quick beats and footwork that makes Ashton so interesting, and broadly interpreting his mime. One could easily comprehend his winning over the icy Kristi Boone as the austere goddess Diana.

As the ballet spins toward its happy finale with a flood of gods and demi-gods, Veronika Part lent a serenity to Terpsichore, partnered by Alexander Hammoudi as Apollo, and Maria Riccetto and Isaac Stappas hit just the right graceful lilt as Persephone and Pluto. Leann Underwood and Jared Matthews took on the roles of Ceres and Jaseion, but it was Misty Copeland and Craig Salstein who stole the scene in the last act with their saucy and adorable commitment to the otherwise mystifying characters of the two goats.

ABT's season at the Metropolitan Opera House continues through July 11, 2009 with Romeo & Juliet.