Dance Theatre of Harlem Performs to Perfection By Alice Kaderland Halsey Dance Theatre of Harlem has been a frequent visitor to Seattle, much to the delight of local dance fans. But the company offered an unusual program this time around, not the typical blockbuster fare that takes one's breath away and brings a toe-tapping audience to its feet long before the final curtain comes down. On this occasion, which coincided with the centennial year of George Balanchine's birth, DTH devoted two of the three pieces on the program to his earliest work. By presenting "Serenade," which Balanchine created in 1934, and "Apollo," his first collaboration with Igor Stravinsky, DTH enabled us to see that, from the beginning, Balanchine was in a class of his own. When discussing Balanchine, it is always difficult to decide whether to give prominence to his innovations in individual movement -- the thrusting hips, turned-in legs, hyper-extended chest -- or to his inspired understanding of music. Balanchine always considered himself a musician first and foremost and said that he wanted audiences to "see the music and hear the dance." In "Serenade," his most lyrical work, he accomplished that brilliantly. The work embodies the grand sweep of Tchaikovsky's rich and glorious score. When performed by DTH's beautiful and accomplished dancers, many of them voluptuous by today's standards, it has a particularly feminine and expansive quality. "Apollo," created for the famed Ballets Russes in 1928, is altogether different, introducing the razor-sharp angularity and dramatic and unexpected accents that became Balanchine's hallmark. . Balanchine reworked "Apollo" many times so it's hard to know which version the DTH uses. But it does bear the distinct signs of all his work for the Ballets Russes -- intense theatricality, a clear if thin story line and a completely integrated relationship between music and movement. DTH's dancers performed the work to perfection. Rasta Thomas, who was performed the title role in Friday's performance, was an Apollo in the tradition of the great Balanchine male danseurs. Closing out the program was the crowd-pleasing "Return" by Robert Garland, set to music by James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Alfred Ellis and Carolyn Franklin. This was contemporary ballet with attitude, one jazzy sequence after another, not quite the stuff of greatness but a heck of a lot of fun. Alice Kaderlan Halsey is a Seattle free-lance dance and theater critic. She can be reached at crisispro@aol.com. Source: Seattle PI

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