Melissa Podcasy photo on Carolina Ballet program (9-15-12, 8 pm) by Tim Lytvinenko.

At 15, Raleigh’s Carolina Ballet ends its first era. Founding principal dancer Melissa Podcasy will retire at the end of this month—in a few days, just a few more performances in Fletcher Opera Theater. The program that opens the Ballet’s season, and closes this chapter of Podcasy’s career comprises four dances by artistic director Robert Weiss. The evening ends with the long work Symposium, which may be his greatest choreography to date. It also includes one last new work for Podcasy, a quiet little story set to Jean Sibelius’ String Quartet in D minor, op. 56, “Voces Intimae.”

Weiss’ Intimate Voices, although sensitive to the beautiful music, doesn’t quite live up to it. The piece suffers from the plodding literal-mindedness freighting many of Weiss’ story ballets—too much stagey business and not enough dancing. An old man (the ever-charming and vital Marin Boieru) receives his many children and their spouses on his birthday. He blows out his cake candle and dies. A funeral ensues. But eldest daughter Melissa Podcasy, who grieves most deeply, can still perceive her father, and there are some lovely bits of emotional dancing for the two of them. The piece suddenly shifts tone and moves into abstraction when all the dancers peel their period mourning costumes to reveal a fresh blue. The dance from that point is quite fine. The cast on the 15^th included nearly all the company principals, and it was very nice to see them together. The choreography did not include anything that Podcasy can no longer do, focusing instead on the great skills that remain—her emotionality, the crisp clarity of her line; the expressive arms, the exquisite feet and ankles.

Some of what is missing was evident in Meditation from Thaïs, set to the music by Jules Massenet. Lindsay Purrington and young Adam Crawford Chavis were fluid and sensual in this luscious short piece. Young, they are free to torque and twist, to move with abandon within the strict ballet steps. This was the only piece of the four on the 15^th that was really vividly alive on stage.

The evening opened with A Classical Ballet, set to Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony no. 1. This is a nice enough piece, but to be more than filler, it needs dancers who are “on.” Pablo Javier Perez was all there, pairing an energetic Jan Burkhard, and Margaret Severin-Hansen and Gabor Kapin were their usual buoyant selves, but the rest of the company left this viewer bored and restless.

The big closer, Symposium, is a splendid piece of choreography—fortunately, I’d seen it three times before, for I would not have known that from the version seen on the 15^th. Sokvannara Sar was utterly wrong in the Dionysos role, so from the beginning the performance was mushy, lacking the sinewy, seductive enticement to dangerous pleasure that ought to inform this choreography and keep it aligned with the musical quality of Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade. Jan Burkhard and Nikolai Smirnov stood out, but the duets generally were not quite there, either, even the beautiful “Fourth Speech” dance about love, created for and danced by Melissa Podcasy and Timour Bourtasenkov. One of the worst things about getting old is that you have to become so careful about everything, and that caution drains the glamour from Podcasy’s dance magic.

Few ballerinas manage such long careers; fewer still return to dance after a hip replacement. Podcasy’s commitment and achievements are impressive. But I’ll prefer to remember her as the dancer she was when she came to Raleigh, with her burning aura and ferocious attack, her fearless leaps and perfect landings. I’ll also be wondering what the Carolina Ballet will look like when a new lead ballerina can once again set the stage on fire.

For a somewhat different take (on a different performance) of the program by my esteemed friend and critic Roy C. Dicks, see his review.