New ABT Cast Goes Through the Tchaikovsky Motions

Tchaikovsky infused even his most celebratory pas de deux with a yearning for oneness, and we return to these duets year after year in hopes of seeing dancers achieve a perfect fusion of body and spirit. The American Ballet Theatre’s Tchaikovsky program offered many such opportunities on Thursday, the second night of the company’s engagement at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

However, most of the newly cast leads used the occasion to display technical prowess and good manners, nothing more. Except in James Kudelka’s ensemble piece “Cruel World” (with largely the same cast as on Wednesday), emotion was left to the orchestra.

Yes, the previously reviewed Angel Corella smiled incessantly in George Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.” But he had virtually no rapport with the fleet, stylish, disarmingly soft Amanda McKerrow, so the chance for any collaborative buzz existed only when she threw herself at him in the coda.

In Kevin McKenzie’s “Nutcracker” duet, Ashley Tuttle served as a generic, slightly pompous ballerina and Guillaume Graffin a capable if easily winded cavalier. Most of the steps went very well and couldn’t have mattered less. No relationship. No excitement.

Both Julie Kent and Robert Hill are perfectly proportioned for the lyric elegance of Lev Ivanov’s White Swan pas de deux and danced together with impressive sensitivity. Unfortunately, a slowed pulse for the music made choreographic flow impossible and the duet became a stop-and-start exercise that lost the intensity it should have accumulated.

A joyless wedding for Aurora and her prince ended the evening, with a technically faultless Paloma Herrera losing herself in some private ballerina funk and an occasionally effortful Keith Roberts trying for a Covent Garden mannequin look--and unfortunately succeeding. The prize celebrant turned out to be Yan Chen: memorably regal, delicate and even intuitive in the Bluebird pas de deux opposite the miscast, hard-working John Gardner.

The only other wedding guest bearing the gift of a personal interpretation turned out to be Elizabeth Gaither as a distinctively sly tease of a White Cat. Where are Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett when we really need them?

* American Ballet Theatre dances the full-length “Cinderella” at 2 and 8 p.m. today and at 2 p.m. Sunday. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. $15-$60. (213) 972-7211.