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Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Mark Laycock (cond.); American Repertory Ballet, Graham Lustig (Artistic Director). Debussy: Afternoon of a faun; Stravinsky: Suite from the Firebird (1919); Nikolai Budashkin: Festive Overture; Joseph Lanner: Steyrische Tanze; Stravinsky: Petrouchka. Richardson Auditorium, Princeton.

Rite of Spring, Firebird, and Petrouchka have become such familiar staples in American orchestral repertoire that it is easy to forget
they were composed as dance scores for Serge Diaghilev's radical Ballet Russes. Millions of concertgoers have proven that Stravinsky's ballet scores can live apart from their realization in dance. They can, but should they?

Princeton Symphony Orchestra, in a pairing with the American Repertory Ballet, tested the theory with a marvelous shared-stage performance of Petrouchka in its fourth concert of the season. Because this was a PSO performance first, the orchestra occupied most of the stage, relegating the dancers to the front third. Keeping the orchestra onstage rather than banishing it to the 'pit' for
the sake of more dance space emphasized the synchronous nature of Stravinsky's inspiration music as dance and dance as music.

Petrouchka was reserved for the second half of the concert, ensuring that few left this sold-out concert after the intermission. In the first half, Music Director Mark Laycock programmed Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun and Stravinsky's 1919 concert suite from The Firebird. Flute principal Jayn Rosenfeld gave a gorgeous fluidity to the Debussy, countered by James Button's stylized, crisp oboe.

Rosenfeld and Button joined principal soloists on bassoon (Roe Goodman), horn (Douglas Lundeen), and clarinet (Pascal Archer) to create a richly textured 'Firebird.' This was the 1919 orchestral version, not the ballet version. So I gave full attention to the orchestra, especially noting the startling shifts from the gleaming, twittering firebird to the frenzied magician's dance. Despite the brilliant performance, I felt a tiny bit cheated, knowing that ballet dancers "who could have danced this" hovered in the wings.

The second half began with two relative lightweights: Nikolai Budashkin's Festive Overture and Joseph Lanner's Steyrische Tanze. Both were there for educational purposes: Stravinsky had dipped into the same trove of folk melodies as Lanner and Budashkin for his portrayal of Petrouchka, the puppet clown who dies for love. Mark Miller's program notes encouraged the audience to find the parallels among the pieces.

Since sets were impossible with a shared stage, ARB Artistic Director Graham Lustig's choreographic trickery substituted for curtains and scenery shifts. The orchestra also played substantial segments without the dancers onstage, a staging tactic that helped the music retain prominence even after the dancers emerged. In the first 'crowd' scene, supposedly set during an 1830s fair in St. Petersburg, Laycock led the PSO through the startling rhythmic changes and the clashing dissonance of what is now called the 'Petrouchka chord' (C major against F-sharp major) at breakneck speed. The flute (Rosenfeld again) that the puppetmaker/magician (Samuel Pott) plays to entice his puppets to dance into life seemed achingly sweet in contrast. Again, in the last fair scene, the PSO played for almost five minutes before the dancers returned to the stage. We were primed for the dissonances now, rushing headlong with the orchestra toward the end of Petrouchka's brief life.

Andrew Notarile made Petrouchka a loose-limbed rag doll with an insouciant style, particularly good as he jeered at the audience after his death. Kristin Scott, as the Ballerina, gave an exquisite grace to her character's presumed wooden limbs and unseen puppetmaster.

The ARB's costumes, long Russian coats for the corps, flamboyant crimson and pink for the Ballerina, and billowing trousers and sashes for the Moor, fully satisfied our craving for theatrical display. The Moor's vaudeville 'blackface' was questionable, even though the face belonged to a person playing a puppet. Did the idea of a Moor really require white circles around his eyes and outsize red lips? The look made the Moor, ably danced by Ryan Carroll, seem more ridiculous than menacing. But perhaps one could see blackface as discordant, as deliberately jarring as Stravinsky's 'Petrouchka' itself.

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