Twyla Tharp Creates "The Princess and the Goblin" Ballet WHAT ever happened to the great narrative ballet? The centuries-old tradition of ballets that tell stories is still beloved by audiences - it's why American Ballet Theater continues to attract hordes of little girls in tutus to the Metropolitan Opera House each spring. But it's not so easy to create the next "Swan Lake" or "Giselle." These days the story ballet has become the Charlie Brown of the dance world: earnest and clumsy, eager to rise to the occasion, yet repeatedly defeated by ineptitude. In the last decade there have been plenty of attempts, with any number of Draculas as well as more recent additions like the Houston Ballet's "Marie" and New York City Ballet's "Ocean Kingdom," which, though dull, was at least a stab at something different. Alexei Ratmansky has the best track record, and Mark Morris's "Sylvia" was enchanting. But most new story ballets have fallen flat with critics and audiences alike. Lynn Garafola, professor of dance at Barnard College , said, "I think many choreographers are approaching it almost as a marketing proposition: we need a big ballet because audiences like stories." But even at the rate at which they bomb, it seems no one is ready to let them go. Especially not Twyla Tharp, who brought modern dance to ballet, choreographed four Broadway shows and remains as prolific as ever at 70. "I'm not satisfied sitting in just the world of abstract work," she said on a sunny afternoon at her Upper West Side penthouse. I'm all in favor of massive structural reality, but I also feel that there are many ways to skin a cat. Will one do? Sure, if you've only got one cat. Who wants to just settle down? Ambition is not necessarily the word you want to use, but a desire for range, a desire to explore, a desire to give full honor to your profession. Over the past year Ms. Tharp spent 13 weeks in the South where, on Friday, the Atlanta Ballet will unveil her full-length production "The Princess and the Goblin" at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. The new work is based on a fantastical 19th-century tale by George MacDonald and was, for Ms. Tharp, many years in the making. It was commissioned jointly by the Atlanta Ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. It's a daring move; the libretto isn't one that American audiences are familiar with. Just as she is stepping into unknown territory, she is hoping that her audiences will take the leap too. "There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition," Ms. Tharp said. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism. It's not a good name for a way of thinking about aesthetics, but much of the grandeur of the Romantic imagination was dismantled by the 20th century. I think that it warrants revisitation. Clearly Ms. Tharp is extremely comfortable in the world of abstract ballet. "Give me a nice 20-count theme, and I can keep you happy for quite a while," she said. But, she added, "it's not the only way to communicate." Even though, as she put it, the representational approach to ballet "has been in the doghouse for a while," she sees it re-emerging as a reaction against modernism. Still, there's always the question of language. Many story ballets falter when the libretto is overly complicated. "I think that needing to translate into words to tell the story of a ballet is a problem," she said. The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language. That the emotions can be felt, I think, that's another thing. Abstract can tend to be very sterile, and the so-called narrative has the capacity for an emotional connection. While the MacDonald story provided the impetus for the production, Ms. Tharp is essentially creating a narrative ballet from scratch, which, as she pointed out to the dancers in Atlanta at the end of last summer, is a difficult task. Set to music by Franz Schubert, as arranged and orchestrated by the composer and Schubert scholar Richard Burke, it is also her first ballet with children.