Neither American Ballet Theatre nor the New York City Ballet did
anything millennial for their Spring 2000 seasons at Lincoln
Center, and that’s a blessing, because neither American Ballet
Theatre nor the New York City Ballet is in a position to do
anything definitive right now. American Ballet Theatre is deep
into blockbuster mentality—a kind of denial, really—
whereby we get week after
week of full-length story ballets (five Taming of the Shrews, for
example, followed by eight La Bayadères), long stretches separated
by two to three days of under-rehearsed repertory programs. Across
the plaza, NYCB looks just joyless, as if the strain of survival in
a boom-rich, arts-fickle New York, plus the monumental legacy of
George Balanchine, is too oppressive a load to cart into the next
century. ABT is bottom-heavy and ramshackle;
NYCB is thin and
rattled. At both, top-tier female dancers are aging or injured, with
no great push coming up from underneath, and day-to-day performance
has all the consistency of a marble in a pinball machine.
For the past few seasons, the light—the tilt!—at Lincoln
Center has come from two young men at ABT: Ethan Stiefel, an
elegant Apollonian blond, and Angel Corella, a boyish brunette
with a burning happiness onstage. Like Hamlet and Fortinbras,
both are princes, but physically, chemically different. Cast in
the same roles on
