Mariinsky Ballet Dances Fokine at Kennedy Center WASHINGTON - Go west, young man!, the saying goes, and a century ago almost all the Russian choreographers did just that. In 1909 Michel Fokine, master of poetic evocation and characterful dance drama, was the first of them to migrate and make most of his ballets in Europe and the Americas. Thanks to him and those who followed, ballet in the West was transformed. It took most of the 20th century, however, for ballet in Russia even to catch up with what Fokine had been doing elsewhere. N. Razina Yekaterina Kondaurova giving dramatic weight to the Mariinsky presentation of "The Firebird." At the Kennedy Center last week, the Mariinsky Ballet presented a triple bill of Fokine ballets, the pure-dance distillation of Romanticism: "Chopiniana" (1908), the old Russian fairy tale; "The Firebird" (1910), retold with a commissioned score by the young Igor Stravinsky; and the Arabian nights orgy of "Schéhérazade" (also 1910). Each opened with the same deep blue curtain emblazoned with the title of the program, "Les Saisons Russes," each letter decorated with a dance image from the early years of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. If you hadn't read the small print, you might easily have thought that the Mariinsky, Fokine's mother company, had been guarding these productions since their creation. The Mariinsky was indeed the company Fokine first joined as a dancer in 1898, but the "Saisons Russes" - 20 years of innovative productions, of which these three ballets are just a famous sample - never occurred in Russia. The impresario Diaghilev, Fokine and others presented them only in Paris and other Western cities. Diaghilev presented "Chopiniana" with a changed title, "Les Sylphides," and an alternative overture. The Mariinsky never acquired "Firebird" or "Schéhérazade" until 1994, when both ballets were staged by the Bolshoi dancer Andris Liepa and the choreographer's granddaughter Isabelle Fokine, using questionable research. This 1994 "Firebird" tries to realize the original 1910 version, with designs by Alexander Golovin and colleagues. And this "Schéhérazade," by contrast, ignores plenty of the information we have about this ballet. Both stagings contradict specific points in Fokine's memoirs. A program note observes that "Chopiniana" is based on a version from 1931, which may explain why its dance text differs so pointedly from the Western "Sylphides." Yet the questions over authenticity of these versions need not matter greatly. As it happens, I saw this triple bill when it was new at the Mariinsky's White Nights festival in 1994. At that time the intelligence with which Mr. Liepa and Ms. Fokine tried to restage aspects of the 1910 "Firebird" was impressive, while the deluxe casting of "Schéhérazade" - Altynai Asylmuratova as the Shah's favorite wife, Zobeide, and Farukh Ruzimatov as the both exotic and erotic Slave - made an unusually strong case for this often hackneyed melodrama. But the pure-dance "Chopiniana," usually one of the constant wonders of the Mariinsky repertory, had ossified. Fortunately, "Chopiniana" soon recovered. This weekend it was beautifully alive with several casts. The conductor Alexei Repnikov took the "Chopiniana" to a fast tempo, but this speed made the mobility of these dancers" spines as great a marvel as ever: bending so pliantly, they seemed always to be breathing. Torsos, legs and arms were all impelled by the music the same way. When moving, the dancers filled the music to the brim; when still - the corps de ballet holds a series of tableaus - they were never inert. At the Saturday matinee Anastasia Kolegova, a delicately slender dancer with marvelously arched feet, brought an easy interplay of light and shade to the Mazurka and Waltz pas de deux (here called the Seventh Waltz); the same role was also well taken by Maria Shirinkina on Friday and Sunday. The male role, known in "Les Sylphides" as "the Poet," was danced on Friday, Saturday evening and Sunday by Maxim Zyuzin, a softly elegant dancer (also with strikingly arched feet) whose long phrases and quiet absorption did much to deepen the ballet's spell. Every female dancer was admirable in these casts, notably Daria Pavlenko, in an eloquent account of the Prelude, and Svetlana Ivanova, in the Waltz solo (here called the 11th Waltz).