There’s nothing quite like homemade. American Ballet Theatre is featuring a program of three ballets created on the company from 1944 to 2009. The oldest is a classic, but it looks as if the newest is built to stick around.
Alexei Ratmansky’s “On the Dnieper” looks even better than it did last year. This substantial work to Prokofiev is the story of a soldier’s homecoming turned bitter when he finds he no longer loves the woman who waited for him.
The cast outdoes itself in the emotionally complex story. Gennadi Saveliev, who plays soldier Sergei, has his best role yet — both he and the choreographer understand Russian melancholy.
The dance is fluid and inventive; the set — wooden fences and cherry trees gently shedding blooms — evocatively beautiful. It’s always good to see a new ballet; to see a new ballet with poetry is a special treat.
Ratmansky speaks ballet, but for Twyla Tharp it’s an acquired tongue. She made “The Brahms-Haydn Variations” 10 years ago. Instead of the brassy Broadway mode she uses for “Come Fly Away,” Tharp made a neoclassical ballet as close as she could get to the Balanchine tradition.
It’s a large ballet, with 30 dancers in simple, neutral-toned costumes. There are a few bright moments, particularly a playful and joyous duet for Marcelo Gomes and Paloma Herrera. Both turn as if there are ball bearings in their feet.
Still, the work is bland and forgettable. Tharp’s success is her excess; she’s like a woman who can’t resist putting on one brooch too many — but if you do that with enough confidence, it becomes your look.
Jerome Robbins’ “Fancy Free” is as enjoyable now as it was when it bowed during WWII. The story — three sailors competing for two dames — later became “On the Town” on Broadway.
The cast plays the comedy broadly, but Ethan Stiefel and Gillian Murphy have a sweet chemistry in the main pas de deux. It probably doesn’t hurt that they have the same chemistry in real life. Repertory is mix-and- match this week; this program repeats Thursday.