Dance

Classical ballet in Boston may be dying. Seasons at the Boston Ballet seem to be getting shorter all the time and the company failed to compensate for length with strength last week when their annual spring performances of Sleeping Beauty showed more unpointed toes and bent knees than solid lines. Nor was the traditional everything it might have been when the Panovs visited the Music Hall last week with the Eglevsky Ballet. The famous Russian pair did have the balance and bravura we've come to expect of all superstars but their noticible uneasiness on stage was a reminder that these two had gone without a rehearsal for a long time while still in the U.S.S.R. The ballet performed by Joanne Hochberg, Lois Rosenberg, and Francine Figie at the Ex at the beginning of April was the one bright spot in what is increasingly being treated as a hollow form.

Where is all the dance energy rushing then? One place is MIT this weekend where students from nine New England colleges will perform mostly original modern works in the first College Dance Festival. Harvard's Andy Borg will present his thesis, Between Two Moons, a story of harlequins set to electronic music. All performances are on Saturday, April 24 at MIT's Dupont Gymnasium at 8:30 p.m. Tickets $1. On Sunday there will be workshops on topics like dance notation and support for the arts beginning at 1:30 in the gymnasium.