A Light Undimmed by Death

ABT II Shines in Series Launched by Bjerknes

The mysteries and injustices of this world were acutely present at a ballet school in Rockville Saturday night, where a richly promising performance of American Ballet Theatre's junior company, ABT II, felt tragically ironic.

Michael Bjerknes, who with his wife, Pamela, founded the American Dance Institute, where ABT II performed, died a week ago after a battle with colon cancer. The weekend's two shows, which included an engaging world premiere by the Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton, were to have been his triumph -- a high-water mark in the Bjerkneses' two-year-old effort to develop a performance series for emerging talent in a 150-seat theater at the school.

Saturday's performance was indeed an artistic success, but it was hard to shake the shock of Michael Bjerknes's death. It felt especially cruel because the 51-year-old Bjerknes, a former principal dancer with the Joffrey Ballet and father of three, was known for his generosity to other artists, and for being a farsighted creative force in the Washington area over the past two decades.

Bjerknes took an uncommonly analytical approach to dance, as proved in the way he started his school. The onetime ballet master at the Washington Ballet prepared for his new role methodically, working for General Electric and earning a management degree before opening ADI in a renovated warehouse in 2000. He was ADI's executive director and leading teacher, and with his wife, a former ABT dancer, as artistic director, he soon wove his institution well into the local dance scene. Numerous local groups were given space to experiment there. The Suzanne Farrell Ballet rehearsed there in recent months, and when the Washington Ballet laid off its dancers during a labor dispute two years ago, the Bjerkneses hosted a series of benefit performances for them.

Pamela Bjerknes was there Saturday to watch the show that ABT II had dedicated to her husband's memory. Undoubtedly, he would have been pleased with the result. Newly under the direction of former ABT principal dancer Wes Chapman, this 13-member troupe of teenagers, many of them international contest winners or products of scholarship programs around the country, danced with the kind of pleased expectancy and unmasked delight in moving that you don't often see in the polished pro. In keeping with the dancers' candor, the intimate and informal ADI studio space provided a good, honest, dancer's-eye look at a couple of ballet's showstoppers, the pas de deux from "Don Quixote" and George Balanchine's "Allegro Brillante," framing them as human-scaled rather than glitzy.

But it wasn't the technical showpieces that left the strongest impression. That honor went to an entirely different kind of work -- a quirky, knowing and understated piece that showed unusually good sense for a contemporary ballet. "Barbara," the premiere by the Edmonton, Alberta, native Barton, was well paced and strikingly simple. It is also the first commission in an admirable ABT undertaking called "Voices and Visions: The Altria/ABT Women's Choreography Project," an effort to support up-and-coming female choreographers over the next three years.

Barton, 32 and a resident artist at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York, is one to watch. She runs her own contemporary dance troupe, Aszure Barton & Artists, but "Barbara" reaches back to her classical roots. A product of Toronto's National Ballet School, she makes intelligent use of the pulled-up lightness of the ballet dancer, while creating a look that is chic and fresh.

This work for nine dancers was accompanied by the songs of French chanteuse Monique Serf, who went by the stage name of Barbara. She has one of those freighted, gargling voices that evoke a lifetime of raw feeling, whether upbeat or despairing, and Barton wisely matched its heat with a streamlined palette. She played with isolated freedoms; hands clasped behind their backs, the dancers might unexpectedly flick a leg ear-high, or carve into space with the hips. One performer dashed off a bit of nimble Irish step dancing, arms plastered to his sides, which looked entirely of a piece with the tone of sly restraint. This made the gradually evolving episodes of lushness all the more emphatic, in a clean and unforced way.

Each dancer had a moment to shine; especially memorable were Joseph Gorak, who displayed a sensual sensitivity unusual in the typical technique-driven male dancer, using his shoulders, back and arms in musically attuned phrasing, and Mara Thompson, a petite spitfire with a juicy, joyful way of moving.

The dancers acquitted themselves capably in the classical works. Sae-Eun Park and Isaac Hernandez danced the "Don Quixote" duet at full throttle, though it lacked color; one hopes they will slow down in time and add some charm and feeling to those steps they chiseled so sharply. But what to make of "Cake," by Brian Reeder? He gets points, I suppose, for trying to make a semi-dramatic work in a world given over to abstract ballet, but the result was a muddle. Something to do with Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, and a lot of pasteboard cutouts of pastries and playing cards, but it was all as stiff and awkward as the white wigs glued to the ladies' heads. Cute frocks, though.