Saturday Matinee at ABT: I’ve come to the realization that, classic masterpiece or no, I just don’t like Theme and Variations. Every time it’s on the program, my inner critic takes a hit of crack and won’t shut up. I can’t just sit and enjoy the dancing, because I find myself focusing on what I think can go wrong, or comparisons to make, or fault to find. Do I have to pay money to get so edgy and cantankerous? Even Angel Corella, (who always looks so happy to be alive that I find it infectious and I love him just because he’s there) couldn’t draw my attention away from the corps who may not have been in Stepford unison, or Ashley Tuttle being almost on the music. So, maybe next time Theme opens the program, I’ll arrive fashionably late.

In contrast, Le Grand Pas De Duex (which has gotten good reviews generally), is my kind o' ballet. It is delightful a bit of comedy, a parody of every fussy, stodgy, classical pas de deux in balletdom. Do I even have to mention the dancers? Xiomara Reyes and Herman Cornejo. Of course it sent me to Happyland. I was howling with laughter. Leigh says he wishes he had seen it with Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Belotserkovsky. Don’t worry, Leigh, a crowd pleaser like this will be back next season, with your favorite dancers fighting to be cast in it. Oh, wait, how could I not mention the set? Upstage right, a cow in a tutu.

Between the intermissions came two pieces that I had never seen before, but which every educated balletomane ought to see: Three Virgins and A Devil, and Flames of Paris. Now that I’ve seen them, I don’t have to see them again.

Three Virgins is not a bad ballet and I think it was danced well this afternoon, but it was choreographed in 1934 and social mores have changed and this morality tale has become irrelevant: The Fanatical One (Sasha Dmochowski), The Greedy One (Maria Riccetto), and The Lustful One (Marion Butler) all dance with the Devil (Craig Salstein). The Devil wins. Yawn.

Flames of Paris is the sort of pyrotechnical pas de whoopee-deux of which Le Grand Pas De Duex made great fun. Although nicely danced by Gillian Murphy and Gennadi Saveliev, it didn’t have a chance.

The program closed with Fancy Free. I often worry when I see non-Americans cast in this ballet, because stylistically it is so completely American Movie Musical of the Forties; if someone didn’t grow up mainlining Gene Kelly, it’s that much more challenging. So Big Props to Marcelo Gomes, Paloma Herrera, and Carlos Lopez for Getting It Right; and no less admiration for the home team of Julie Kent, Craig Salstein, and Angela Snow.