Lively Museum

When Ballet Theater first bounced on the scene 15 years ago, it called itself "a museum of the dance." The label was meant to indicate that all styles, old and new, would be on exhibit. Over the years, the lively museum gave U.S. ballet a new turn: it kicked new life into the mummified remains of classical ballet (which it performed with loving care) and pioneered an electric, freshly dramatic modern style. Last week, to wind up its15th anniversary celebration, Ballet Theater gathered its stars and most famous graduates, moved into Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House for a three-week run before touring New England, Mexico and South America. Along with some traditional specimens (Giselle, Swan Lake), the repertory included such milestones in U.S. ballet evolution as Agnes de Mille's Fall River Legend (the Lizzie Borden case), Jerome Robbins' Fancy Free (three sailors on shore leave), Eugene Loring's Billy the Kid (life and death of the killer). Best of all, the museum's human exhibits proved far from musty. Standouts: P: Nora Kaye, 35, who returned to the company (after four years with the New York City Ballet) to revive the famed Pillar of Fire, in which she dances Hagar, the girl who is bitterly afraid of becoming an old maid. When the curtain parted to show Hagar sitting on her house steps, feet together, head and shoulders agonizingly tense, the audience burst into applause: Ballerina Kaye created the part in 1942, and nobody else has ever danced it. Pillar of Fire (set to Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht) established her as a unique dancing actress who brought new depth to ballet. Last week Ballerina Kaye danced the part with the same old tragic fervor. P: Pillar's British Choreographer Antony Tudor, 46, who was originally "curator" of the company's Modern English wing, was on hand last week to dance the part of Hagar's beloved. P: Lucia Chase, late-fortyish, Ballet Theater's longtime wealthy angel and firm guiding hand, was on her toes again in a ceremonial appearance as Hagar's spinsterish elder sister. P: Guest Ballerina Alicia Markova, 44, who has been a star ever since the days when a ballerina without a Russian name was no ballerina at all (she was born Alicia Marks, in London). A veteran of Sadler's Wells and of Ballet Theater itself, Ballerina Markova floated through such romantic favorites as Les Sylphides and Romeo and Juliet with an airy grace that has never lost its charm. P: Igor Youskevitch, 43. had the audience gasping, with his handsome bounds and dizzy spins in confections such as pas de deux from Nutcracker and Swan Lake. Russian-born Danseur Noble Youskevitch, who was an aspiring Olympic gymnast when he turned to ballet in 1932, is one of the world's greatest male classical dancers. Last week he also leaped into a dramatic role: Stanley Kowalski, in Valerie Bettis' version of A Streetcar Named Desire. Dancer Youskevitch happily strutted his muscular way through the gloomy scenes, less expressive but considerably more agile than the dramatic version's Marlon Brando. P: Dancer-of-all-work John Kriza, 35, turned up in perhaps his most popular part, the cockiest sailor in Fancy Free, which had the audience giggling merrily, and as the lovelorn doll in Petrouchka, which had it misty-eyed.

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