Again and again we've been told that the retirement of Darci Kistler from City Ballet-after a career of 30 years-was the end of an era: the era of ballerinas anointed by Balanchine. When she was 16, he brought her into the company, and within months she was dancing the Swan Queen, the Sugarplum Fairy, the great adagio movement from Symphony in C. She was the last of the very young girls he had discovered and groomed, beginning with the famous "baby ballerinas" of the early '30s (Toumanova, Baronova, Riabouchinska) and including LeClercq, Kent, Farrell, Kirkland: the God-given ones.

Kistler, indeed, in those early days, seemed like the offspring of the gods. She was not only amazingly talented but she radiated joy, health, beauty, confidence. She was golden. When Balanchine died, in 1983, she was the future. Yet she had already suffered the injury to her ankle that was to determine the rest of her career-not only her immediate prolonged absence from the stage but the brake on the grandeur, the opulence of her movement. She remained a glorious presence, she remained a lovable and beloved figure, but she never regained her absolute command.

And so her farewell gala was an emotionally complicated event. The cheering, the kisses, the flowers, the sparkling confetti were all in place; who could deny their appropriateness? She had earned them. But who could resist feeling sad not simply at her departure-Pavlova departed, Fonteyn departed-but at the ill luck that kept her from becoming not only the darling of City Ballet but the great dancer of her time. It might not have happened-but it might have.

The gala program itself was a mixed blessing. Despite some tactfully modified choreography, it was clear that the exposed vocabulary of Monumentum/Movements was now beyond Kistler. But although she was more kittenish than she used to be as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream-she danced the Bottom pas de deux-she was charming, enticing and young, not only in look but in quality of movement. And in the final act of Peter Martins' Swan Lake, she showed us what a ballerina she had been; what a ballerina is. She made it easy for us to give a wholehearted final embrace to Balanchine's last girl.

THE KISTLER FAREWELL came at the end of an exhausting season. As we know from Gypsy, ya gotta have a gimmick, and this time out we had two. There was the ambitious program of seven premieres. And there was the "Architecture of Dance" theme, with five of the new works designed by the acclaimed architect Santiago Calatrava. (There was also a short, self-congratulatory documentary about this collaboration, which, after you'd been stuck seeing it more than once, you wanted to wipe from the screen.)  

The seven premieres were no better and no worse than was predictable and predicted. Ratmansky's Namouna, A Grand Divertissement was the only one of substance-long, quirky and irresistible. From England, Wayne McGregor; from Italy, Mauro Bigonzetti; and from France, Benjamin Millepied gave us efficient, energized exercises, all equally empty and all gone tomorrow-who can even remember their names today? Melissa Barak produced an unspeakable mishmash about Bugsy Siegel that defies belief and description. Christopher Wheeldon came up with a piece of irrelevant retro populism involving horses and cowgirls, which at least pleased the crowd.

And in the final week of the season, Peter Martins unveiled a new work, Mirage, that brought us a distinguished score-Esa-Pekka Salonen's Violin Concerto, conducted by the composer and played by Leila Josefowicz-that stood out in contrast to the newly commissioned works by other hands. The ballet itself, however, didn't stand out, and for the usual reasons: Martins is always capable, but his movement vocabulary is so limited that there's never much to watch-he's the exact opposite of Ratmansky, whose Namouna was brimming with invention. (Happily, though, Martins gave the central role to the very talented Jennie Somogyi.)

As for Calatrava, two of his designs, the Wheeldon and the Barak, were pictorial rather than architectural, and who needed a major architect for those? The Millepied, Bigonzetti and Martins ballets were furnished with huge, handsome constructs that occasionally moved and changed color, and, particularly when hovering overhead, distracted the audience from the dancers. The Calatrava connection may have been a public-relations coup, but it was an artistic misfire.

Meanwhile, the company was churning out general repertory, with not very happy results. The corps was under-rehearsed except in the new pieces-an egregious example: Kistler's swans. Prodigal Son was a vacuum: Joaquin De Luz doesn't have a clue; Maria Kowroski is a gorgeous Siren, also clueless; the "goons" were boring, not threatening. Only Sean Suozzi as one of the servants restored this masterpiece to life. Western Symphony was listless and lusterless until the third movement, when Sara Mearns and Robert Fairchild, the heroes of the season, kicked in. Suddenly, the whole thing sprang to life, the way Balanchine does when danced by people who know they're meant to be expressing something. Who Cares? looked as though no one cared very much, although Fairchild and Tiler Peck invigorated it. Chaconne and The Four Temperaments were underpowered. It's time to pry Mozartiana away from Wendy Whelan.

Last season, the gimmick was all those full-evening ballets-City Ballet as ABT; this season it was all the premieres, with their attendant architecture. What if the gimmick for the four-week season coming up in September was well-rehearsed and well-coached repertory? I can dream, can't I?

THE BIG NEWS at ABT is rarely repertory, and if there are premieres, they're usually ghastly. Dancers are what ABT is all about. This season the sensation was the Bolshoi's Osipova in her signature role of Don Quixote's Kitri. She was made for it, and it for her. But in the Battle of the Beauties-she and the Royal's wonderful Alina Cojocaru gave one Sleeping Beauty performance each on a frantic Saturday-she came off second best. Not because her spectacular virtues weren't on display, but because Aurora is essentially not her role. She has no trouble with the steps, but the trajectory from joyous innocence to grandeur and mature love is as yet beyond her. Cojocaru's delicacy and classical purity, and her understanding of Aurora, were entrancing. She knows that the notorious Rose Adagio isn't just about holding balances, it's also about how Aurora shyly engages with each suitor; how she lovingly presents the roses to her mother rather than flinging them aside. (This was a Fonteyn specialty. But Fonteyn, too, danced roles for which she wasn't right-Coppélia's Swanilda for one.) Cojocaru is a born Beauty.

The great triumph of the season was Ashton's The Dream, with a dream cast: Gillian Murphy, David Hallberg and Herman Cornejo. Second-cast Marcelo Gomes is a paragon, but he's solid, masculine, direct-he isn't the otherworldly androgynous Oberon Ashton created. All season long, Hallberg, Gomes and Cornejo performed their usual wonders, and Jose Manuel Carreño, another male star of great presence and appeal, was also in superb form. Among the leading men, only Ethan Stiefel was a disappointment-out of whack in Fancy Free and poorly cast in Balanchine's Allegro Brillante. This intense, demanding work, set to Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 3, is Russian classicism at its most imperial; Stiefel, meanwhile, is unyieldingly boyish. On the other hand, Murphy, the company's finest Balanchine dancer, was thrilling opposite him-casually flinging off triple turns and in absolute charge of the music and the vocabulary. She grows in stature from year to year, technically breathtaking and increasingly effective in dramatic roles-she's ABT's Kyra Nichols.

The whole company has been looking terrific, with younger dancers like Simone Messmer, Hee Seo and Cory Stearns making strong impressions. It's also to ABT's credit that it goes on presenting triple bills of consequence-the Ashton program, the American program, the All-Classic Masters program-despite the preference of the Met's summer audiences for multi-act story ballets. Do they notice, I ask myself, the awfulness of the company's Sleeping Beauty production, the inferiority of its Swan Lake, the drippiness of this season's stab at establishing a new full-evening narrative work, the dire Lady of the Camellias? Let's hope that they're too busy being dazzled by all the tremendous dancing.

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But what is he really about? Why don’t his ballets—and we’ve seen a lot of them by now, a dozen or so for City Ballet alone—add up to a coherent artistic statement? Where is the major work that will identify his essential qualities and justify the hopes everyone has placed in him? Or is his major work the group of pieces he’s already made to Ligeti and Pärt: Polyphonia, Morphoses, Liturgy, After the Rain and Continuum (made for San Francisco)? Perhaps that collective work is going to constitute his contribution, and it’s only the specter of Balanchine, with his uniquely full armory of classical, neo-classical, dramatic, romantic and avant-garde work, that leads us to expect more from him. Everyone understood that it was unfair to expect Peter Martins, who inherited the company, also to inherit the mantle of genius. Are we burdening Wheeldon with impossible expectations?

His latest piece, Klavier, is a particular puzzlement. The music he’s chosen is the third movement—the 18-minute adagio sostenuto—from Beethoven’s towering Hammerklavier piano sonata, Opus 106. This is one of the most profound, and thorny, of Beethoven’s works, comparable in density and depth to the last quartets. It isn’t easy to perform; it isn’t even easy to absorb. But one thing about it is clear: Its monumental architecture is crucial to understanding any part of it; the adagio movement shouldn’t be made to stand alone. Listen to any recording (I grew up on Schnabel’s profound interpretation but lately have been listening to the more tempestuous Pollini) and you’ll realize why dropping in on the Hammerklavier is not only impertinent but futile. This is not music that wants to be danced to. Balanchine warned against choreographing to Beethoven, and here’s further proof that he was right.

Klavier takes place in that familiar ballet territory of romantic loss and longing. The look is High Decadent: a fallen Venetian chandelier, ungainly costumes featuring see-through black net for the women and deeply unflattering necklines for the men—they have some kind of floral decoration, like wilting leis. (Jean-Marc Puissant, a favorite Wheeldon collaborator, is responsible for the design.) Trying to be Romantic, Wheeldon has used music that is intractable: The more you concentrate on it, the less relevant the dancing is; the more you concentrate on the dancing, the less you understand why such great music has been reduced to background sound. Wheeldon doesn’t work from inside this music—no one could. Instead, he only uses it to establish the mood. The only idea I can find in Klavier is the desire to stretch the range of his favorite dancer, Wendy Whelan, into lyricism, and with her usual intelligence and determination she has risen to the challenge. But she could have risen to it more easily and effectively with a more pliable piece of music, and we might have had a real ballet rather than an exercise.

There are two lead couples in Klavier—Whelan with Sébastien Marcovici and Miranda Weese with Albert Evans (but forget the men; they’re conveniences)—and Wheeldon has helped Weese, too, to a rare expressivity. There are also two trios, featuring some of the most talented of the company’s younger dancers. As in all Wheeldon ballets, the groups are cleverly deployed, and the big duets for the stars are effective, too, although Whelan has been given much more to do than Weese—a confusing circumstance, since at the start they’re presented as balanced counterparts. As for the shape of the ballet, it depends on that overworked device of returning at the end to the beginning (everyone walking solemnly to the front and to the rear)—you see it coming a mile away.

Is the whole thing meant as an homage to Balanchine’s sublime Liebeslieder Waltzer? I hope not, but if it is, this is Liebeslieder as Jerome Robbins might have made it. Robbins, though—even in his less successful works—had a distinctive voice; Wheeldon’s is as yet undeveloped, or perhaps he’s just too adaptable. Or maybe he just likes to take on tough assignments. His last three big City Ballet pieces have been set to implacably resistant scores: Shambards to James MacMillan; An American in Paris, another piece Balanchine shied away from, despite his admiration for Gershwin; and now the Hammerklavier. Come on, Wheeldon, give yourself a break!

AS FOR THE BALANCHINE REPERTORY, what I’ve seen this season at the State Theater has been at best second-rate. Weese presents Allegro Brillante as charming and sweetly pretty, whereas in fact it was meant to be a slam-bang, take-no-prisoners showpiece. Maria Tallchief (on whom it was made) swarmed all over it; Melissa Hayden came on like a herd of rhinos. That’s the fun of it. Wake up, everybody—this is a Tchaikovsky piano concerto, not La Source.

The Stravinsky pairing of Monumentum pro Gesualdo and Movements for Piano and Orchestra, almost always performed together, can now be placed on the official list of endangered Balanchine ballets, along with Bugaku and Orpheus. As danced by Darci Kistler, it’s a black hole—unrecognizable and uninteresting. It’s tragic to see this once-great dancer reduced to such emptiness, but it’s more tragic to see Balanchine reduced to zero.

And then there’s Symphony in C—Bizet, as it’s lovingly referred to throughout the dance world. The good news is that Jennie Somogyi, slowly repairing after the dire accident that kept her offstage for so long, is back in command. As I’ve reported, her Sugar Plum was tentative, and her first performance of Bizet’s first movement wasn’t at full strength. A couple of weeks later, though, on the night of the Klavier premiere, she was her terrific self—pouncing on the music, secure, triumphant. (Her partner was poor Nilas Martins, looking more and more like Philip Seymour Hoffman and pathetically inadequate. Please, someone, release him—and us—from this agony.) We also had Sofiane Sylve in the adagio movement, and it’s just like her Swan Lake—all Ballerina, and French Ballerina at that. She’s so sure of herself, so apparently pleased with herself … and no one, presumably, has suggested to her that she doesn’t have the faintest idea of what this very great role is about. She has no sense of the whole, no mystery, no arc, no depth.

Sylve is an intelligent dancer—won’t someone help her? Bizet’s second movement isn’t an impossibly difficult challenge: We’ve seen an entire array of great performances, from Tanaquil LeClercq down through Kent, Verdy, Farrell, Kistler and on into the present. But those were Balanchine dancers. When you see Somogyi followed by Sylve, you get the whole story: one, full of joyous energy; the other, a Star Turn. In Bizet’s glorious coda, there are Somogyi—and little Megan Fairchild and even Abi Stafford—giving us their all, and there’s Sylve, sort of keeping up while graciously behaving like just one of the girls. It’s the kind of dancing they love in Paris, where hierarchy trumps expressivity every time.

How Balanchine is performed is the central issue at City Ballet, and for years now the record has been worse than spotty. Last season, things were looking up-when they weren't looking grim. Gala night perfectly symbolized both the ups and the downs. Some of the self-congratulation was justified-there were times when the spirit of Mr. B did come through-but there was trouble, too; Bugaku , one of Balanchine's most singular ballets, which has been lingering on the endangered-species list, may actually now be extinct.

It made sense to open with Serenade , the first ballet Balanchine created in America (in 1934) and one of his greatest. Because it was made on the students of the then-new School of American Ballet, and in certain ways was intended as a learning tool, an experiment that might have seemed gimmicky proved to be both instructive and moving: using students from today's S.A.B. in the opening movement as the rapt girls whom we first see in first position, one arm raised in aspiration. (It would have been more moving if these wonderful opening moments weren't being performed these days in almost pitch dark.) The girls, "prepared and rehearsed" by Suki Schorer, did the school and the ballet proud. Even better, the company women who replaced them on stage for the rest of the performance seemed invested in what they were doing. (There have been occasions in recent years when Balanchine's swirling patterns have looked mechanical and lifeless.) The three principal women, however, presented a problem: namely, why these three? The majestic Kyra Nichols fills her tragic role with nobility and restraint; the recent import, Sofiane Sylve, with her strong attack and easy command, continues to impress as a potential Balanchine dancer, if not one particularly suited to the romantic Serenade ; and Yvonne Borree, as usual, goes through the motions without grasping their import. These three dancers are particularly ill-matched, so that Serenade fragments into three ballets.

Alas, poor Bugaku : It was a sensation back in 1963, with its exotic, erotic atmosphere, its experimental score, its ravishing and daring Karinska costumes, its astonishing performances from Allegra Kent and Edward Villella. Bugaku was a stunning mating ritual, a shocking yet refined sexual exhibition, a brilliantly suggestive commentary on the Japanese psyche and on Japanese art. Villella's compact and dangerous power, Kent's delicate sensuality, their deep understanding of Balanchine's intentions made this unique ballet as disturbing and provocative as anything ever seen on City Ballet's stage. Today, as performed by Darci Kistler and Jock Soto, it's a travesty-lacking not only three dimensions but any dimensions. Kistler could never have been right in this role-she's an all-American, lovable girl who once had a remarkable amplitude of movement. Today, she's nothing but decoration: little flicks of the wrist and tosses of the head substitute for large-scale dancing. What she does is fussy, it's empty, it's desperate. It's made of paper, not flesh. And for Bugaku , it's disaster. As for the heroic Jock Soto, he spent a decade hauling Heather Watts around the stage, and then another decade hauling Kistler; why not give him a break and spare him the humiliations of roles (and tight costumes) like these? Or is he doomed, like some kind of balletic Flying Dutchman, to keep going as long as Darci Kistler and Peter Martins, her husband, persist in ignoring her current limitations?

Bugaku may not be one of Balanchine's greatest works, but it is-or was-remarkable. No one involved in this performance had the faintest idea of what it was about. (Even the music was attenuated.) Could proper coaching have helped? I don't believe that anyone could have coached Kistler and Soto into a semblance of the real thing, but there are dancers in the company who-coached by Villella and Kent-might approximate it. As we know, though, the great Balanchine dancers of the past are not welcome at City Ballet. The last time I saw Bugaku at Miami City Ballet, Villella's company, it was recognizable and alive. At Dance Theater of Harlem, it's vulgarized beyond redemption. At City Ballet, it's diluted beyond redemption. And perhaps the company knows it: This is the only scheduled performance during the entire Centennial Celebration. I'm afraid it's bye-bye Bugaku .

And then, as balm, came the best performance of Symphony in C I've seen at City Ballet in years-particularly gratifying after the production mounted by the Paris Opera Ballet earlier in the fall, which was carefully staged, earnestly performed and sadly lackluster. (An irony, given that "Bizet," as everyone calls this masterpiece, began its life there in 1947, as Le Palais de Cristal .) The other night, the corps at the State Theater tore into it; the demis looked happy to be doing their roles instead of patronizing them; the orchestra, under Andrea Quinn, was vivid and alert; and the first three ballerinas were triumphant. We knew that Jennie Somogyi had mastered the difficult first movement, so no surprise there, but Maria Kowroski, after years of sleepwalking through the sublime second movement, has found a measure of depth and meaning in it at last-perhaps her recent experience dancing in Russia has awakened her to the fact that Balanchine ballets are about something.

And somebody has definitely been helping Janie Taylor in the allegro third movement: The talent and energy have been there, but she's been out of control and out of focus. Suddenly there was focus, clarifying and channeling her technical ability. All she needs now is a smile-or, if she's smiling, some help in projecting it. Her partner, Benjamin Millepied, is also considerably improved. The two of them even pulled off (sort of) the joyous throws at the top of a series of high lifts-as Millepied propelled Taylor straight up over his head, he flicked his hands from her waist, then caught her a moment later on the way down. That's the way it used to be done, but it's hard, and we haven't seen it very often in recent years; so welcome back, and congratulations to the two of them for their bravery. As for the fourth movement, it has become a kind of orphan; Pascale van Kipnis doesn't bring anything to it-she's striking looking, but her dancing is relentlessly bland. The incandescent coda went well, though-Kowroski is not a natural turner, but she gamely kept up, and there are no technical pitfalls here for Somogyi and Taylor or their capable partners. This was a "Bizet" to remember. Now we have to wait for post- Nutcracker January to see whether it or Bugaku is the true harbinger of things to come.

This is the season, then, that saw Jenifer Ringer, Jennie Somogyi, Alexandra Ansanelli and Janie Taylor graduated into responsibility, with varying results. Ringer remains a pleasing lyrical dancer with a pretty face and an endearing manner, but she's suddenly being put forward as a major Balanchine classicist: In the last week of the season, she attempted the Midsummer Night's Dream pas de deux, a role whose delicacy and tricky shifts of balance register properly only when they rest on unassailable strength. But Ringer, however charming, is underpowered, and this far into her career-13 years with the company already-she's not likely to get much stronger. The problem manifested itself even more tellingly in Theme and Variations , a role that ruthlessly exposes technical weakness. Ringer just doesn't have the requisite clarity and articulation, the easy unmannered command; she looked blurred, almost doughy. She's not as overmatched in Raymonda Variations , but in the McBride role in Who Cares? ("The Man I Love," "Fascinatin' Rhythm") she was pallid and nervous in her first performance, somewhat more vibrant in her second, but still light-years away from McBride's playful assurance.

The company does have a brilliant Balanchine classicist in Somogyi. She's admirable in the daunting First Movement of Symphony in C , except for underdeveloped beats in the supported lifts, and in Who Cares? ("Embraceable You," "My One and Only") she's the one you can't take your eyes off, she rips into the steps with such bold joy. A company's values-and its capacity to nurture dancers-can usually be understood through its casting policies, so what does it mean that Somogyi wasn't given Theme and Variations ? Do they dislike her can-do attitude? Her look? Do they think she can't prosper in the big Tchaikovsky roles? Don't they remember how Balanchine nursed Merrill Ashley from her brilliant allegro persona-by way of Emeralds -into Swan Lake and Diamonds ? At the moment, it's hard to avoid the impression that Somogyi is being ghettoized.

Ansanelli is so hard-working, so hungry to dance, so intelligent that it's easy to forgive her less-than-regal physique and her tendency to push too hard. She was vivid and convincing in the "Voices of Spring" section of Vienna Waltzes , she was quickly at home in the Stravinsky Violin Concerto after a shaky first performance, and she made a brave stab at the lead in Divertimento No. 15 , but she's so modern and aggressive that it's hard to imagine her exerting traditional ballerina authority. Yet consider how Wendy Whelan has extended herself these last years. Her latest triumph of will and hard work was the Dream pas de deux, where her problem has been the exact opposite of Ringer's: She has the powerful technique that Ringer lacks, but it's taken her years to find the lyricism, the poise, needed for this incomparably subtle choreography. What Whelan has taught herself is how to compensate for her essentially unclassical body and her jagged attack. It's as if she's imagined herself into being a Balanchine classicist; by her third Dream of the season, she was strikingly lovely, a word rarely used to describe her. And you can see the same transformation taking place as she gradually conquers Mozartiana . Whelan, like Ashley before her, has slowly earned her central place in the company; whatever her peculiarities, she's become indispensable.

Young Janie Taylor is a talented enigma. She has buoyant energy and a huge jump, and she takes risks, but who is she? She's being offered large chunks of the repertory, and she tears into roles, but she never looks as if she's enjoying herself, so how can we enjoy her? So far she's dancing behind a veil. And this is all too true of many City Ballet dancers these days: technical facility combined with a near-total lack of expressivity. (Miranda Weese blazed this trail.)

The major exception among the younger girls is Carla Körbes, still in the corps. Until she suffered a serious injury to her foot a few seasons back, she was on the fast track, but this season she was used only sporadically: extraordinarily beautiful and moving (as a last-minute substitute) in the Elegy from Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3 ; full of feeling as Helena in Dream . A few seasons ago, with Kistler injured, she was successfully rushed into the role of Titania, but it was withheld from her this year-seniority rules. So how is an important talent like hers supposed to grow? Körbes is so ardently responsive to music that it's hard to imagine Balanchine waiting so long to propel her into prominence. Think of Darci Kistler: Balanchine handed her Swan Lake and Symphony in C almost before she had set foot onstage. Peter Martins was recklessly (and rightly) swift with Maria Kowroski, but her career exposes another of the company's problems: Except in a few roles, she hasn't developed; she's the same gorgeous question mark she was at the beginning. And now the single most talented girl of the past 20 years, Monique Meunier, is leaving City Ballet-where she's been a hapless principal-to become a soloist at A.B.T. We'll soon see whether her bewildering failure to emerge as a great dancer reflects her own problems or the company's.

Matters are equally precarious with the men. Peter Boal is nearing the end of his distinguished career-still a paragon, stylish and elegant, but slightly diminished. Damian Woetzel, in his 17th year onstage, puts on his usual good show, but his virtuosity is beginning to fray: His Oberon was surprisingly lackluster. Jock Soto is a magnificent partner-he's spent most of the past 21 years valiantly lugging Heather Watts, Kistler and Whelan around the stage-but he does not present a pretty picture: He and Whelan in the Dream pas de deux looked like a role-reversed Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat. Nilas Martins-Peter's son-was out the entire season with a foot injury, thus sparing us another season of embarrassment. Nicolaj Hübbe flings himself generously into things, but he has no real direction or identifiable repertory; he seems marginalized. Tall, rangy Charles Askegard-newly married to Candace Bushnell-is an appealing oddball, hardly a danseur noble . In a wholesale promotion designed to shore up the male contingent, Benjamin Millepied, Sébastien Marcovici and James Fayette were all made principals; we shall see. No, A.B.T. is where the boysare-including,ofcourse,the great one who got away from City Ballet, Ethan Stiefel.

And then, in a late June Dream , everything came together. The Titania was Kowroski, and this is her quintessential role. Not only does it display her radiant beauty and her extraordinary expansiveness, it also confirms that she is happiest onstage when given something to "act." With her lush, deep penchées, her beautifully shaped lifts, her easy swing from mood to mood, she inevitably reminds you of Suzanne Farrell without making you miss her. Kowroski, however, was third-cast in Dream . First-cast was Kistler, once so glorious in this role, now, alas, a touch matronly and creaky. But her husband is Peter Martins, and who can argue with that? We can, however, argue the claims of seniority and greatness: Kyra Nichols was second -cast (her calm majesty carried her through). Even so, Titania is now Ms. Kowroski's role, and only nepotism plus a kind of civil-service mentality could have kept her waiting in the wings.

Kowroski'sOberon,Benjamin Millepied, is closer to the elegant Helgi Tomasson than to the explosive Edward Villella (on whom the role was made). Millepied's beats-basic to Oberon's vocabulary-are shallow and unexciting, but his manner is pleasing, and he and Kowroski certainly make a handsome young pair. Somogyi, the Hippolyta, had the audience roaring with excitement: Her fouettés-the step that defines this role-are thrilling in their impact, not just the usual boring trick. The young lovers, particularly Ringer, were appealing. Taylor was a whirlwind of a butterfly, if a little tall for the role. The dozens of children were superbly coached-dancing hard, cuteness kept to a minimum. Perhaps most important, the company's impressive new music director, Andrea Quinn, who has been specializing in the modern repertory,conductedthegreatMen-delssohn score in a way that retained its dancy lightness and charm yet brought out its symphonic implications. The whole evening was as enchanted as Shakespeare's"forestoutside Athens"-a blessed antidote to so much that had gone wrong earlier in the season.

More on City Ballet next week.