Rare Bird

The curtain rose on a blue Asiatic nightscape. A ballerina in a plumed, scarlet and gold tutu skittered gracefully across the stage. Then a hunter snared her.

At about that point, one night last week, Sadler's Wells Star Margot Fonteyn ceased to be a ballerina and became the bird she intended to portray. The ballet: Firebird, dreamed up in 1910 for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes by the late, style-making Choreographer Michel Fokine and style-shaking Composer Igor Stravinsky.

The hunter, danced in last week's performance by handsome Michael Somes, wonderingly clutched his rare bird. Her movements were startled, quivering, with precipitous halts on one toe tip, her torso parallel to the ground, her other leg arrow-straight behind her. Three times she made a vicious break for freedom, three times she had her wild wings pinned by the hunter. At last, exhausted, she sagged in defeat, and as ransom, presented her captor with a gold feather. He set her free.

After that, the magical illusion went out of the production. Thirteen girls-enchanted maidens all, wearing white calf-length dresses that looked like nightgowns--trotted on, stretched gracefully and all but went to sleep. The hunter made the acquaintance of the head sleepyhead (really a princess, danced by pretty Svetlana Beriosova), and the girls went into low-pressure love rites. The Russian fairy tale plot darkened further--got so dark, in fact, that only the program notes could make it almost clear. A gang of leaping fiends, Tartars and scimitarists introduced a horrid wizard (mimed by Frederick Ashton), but the Firebird returned and forced the whole evil crew to dance on and on to exhaustion. Then the hunter smashed the giant egg that contained the wizard's soul and married the beautiful princess. Curtain.

Firebird was no novelty to the U.S. The Col. de Basil company toured it in the '40s, and George Balanchine's New York City Ballet has done a shortened version --carefully avoiding such delicacies as the soul-in-the-egg. The Sadler's Wells version was faithful to the original choreography of 1910. In fact, it captured the old spirit so well that the once-daring Stravinsky music began to sound just like Mussorgsky with wrong notes.

Its real value lay in the steely performance of Margot Fonteyn, whose Firebird was both exciting and chilling. Usually noted for her lyrical grace, Fonteyn this time turned most of the role into a furious, possessed, almost diabolic whirl.

In Britain, her interpretation stirred up a fine tempest. British Balletomane Cyril Beaumont, 64, huffed in London's Sunday Times: "[The original] Firebird was a beneficent, fairy-like being. Fonteyn . . .

presents almost a savage bird of prey." But ex-Ballerina Tamara Karsavina, 70, who created the role in 1910 and had coached Fonteyn, recalled that Fokine himself had instructed her: "You are a bird of prey ... I want a mighty beat of wings, not graceful flutterings." As for New York City, both audience and critics loved the bird, down to the last feather.,

Sadler's Wells revealed two other pleasing new productions last week: P: Choreographer Ashton's Rinaldo and Armida, in which a gallant (Somes) pursues an enchanted girl (Beriosova), braving the hazards presented by a misty forest and a jealous witch (at one point she lays him low with an osteopath's neck-snap). The couple goes into some fairly passionate courting, including one handsome lift in which she climbs to his shoulders with the agility of a mountain goat

In the end, she submits to his kiss, only to die in his arms.

P: The latest revision by Director Ninette de Valois of that old charmer, Coppelia starring petite Ballerina Nadia Nerina, a whirlwind dancer, a vivacious actress and an impudent comedienne all at once. Coppelia, as generations of balletgoers know is a mechanical doll who all but wins the heart of a young man. Dolls of several nationalities dance in the dollmaker's workshop, elegantly costumed peasants gambol m the village square, and occasionally the story stops for a joyful pas de deux: in short, a delightful show.

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