Entertainment

WELSHING ON ‘RABBIT’

CHOREOGRAPHERS are an unpredictable bunch, now more than ever. It used to be that a Balanchine or a Robbins could produce good ballets and bad ballets – but never ballets that dropped below some sturdy level of professionalism.

Those days, it appears, are over.

Twyla Tharp has proved to be one of the outstanding choreographers of the past few decades in modern dance, classic ballet and perhaps Broadway (one fair hit, two nasty misses).

That said, it appears that even she is capable of generating a work that’s barely competent in imaginative and dramatic grasp, formal structure or simply dance invention. This was sadly demonstrated with the world premiere of her “Rabbit and Rogue” by American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House on Tuesday.

To be fair, choreography is one of the most difficult of the arts. The actual conditions of its creation – involving living bodies and passing moments – place severe restrictions upon the creator.

Still, some elements can be controlled from the start. The music, for instance.

Tharp either commissioned, chose or accepted a score specially written by a movie composer, Danny Elfman, best-known perhaps for his collaborations with director Tim Burton.

Essentially, the function of a movie score is to be seen but not heard, noted but not noticed. For “Rabbit and Rogue,” he offers a wall of sludge – obtrusive, fast-moving and embellished with cartoonish quirks.

When you call a ballet “Rabbit and Rogue,” you presumably have some dramatic motivation in mind. And two of the company’s finest male dancers are cast: Herman Cornejo as Rabbit and Ethan Stiefel as Rogue.

It took me a long time to figure out which was which. Even after I guessed correctly, I was left with the even more pressing question: Why?

Why was one Rabbit (surely not a cross-reference to novelist John Updike) and why was the other Rogue? Were they two halves of the same character; good angel/bad angel stuff? If so, it was never apparent.

It all seemed to be a cartoon drama, yet devoid of drama and with little in the way of cartoonish flourish.

The costumes by fashion designer Norma Kamali, all in black and white, were suitably chic. And the conventional, repetitive choreography was enthusiastically performed by Stiefel and Cornejo as well as two other mysterious leading couples – Gillian Murphy with David Hallberg and Paloma Herrera with Gennadi Saveliev. But nothing can come of nothing.

The program opened with a largely indifferently danced revival of Harald Lander’s “Etudes,” led by Xiomara Reyes, Jared Matthews and Sascha Radetsky. This was once one of the company’s signature works – now that signature is somewhat smudged.

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 362-6000. Season runs through July 12.