"Face to Face," a dramatic duet performed by Jennita Russo and Robert Weber with just the right sultry, reined-in passion, depicts a difficult relationship convincingly and even stylishly.

At last they established a cautious peace, concluding a dramatic duet filled with fascinating passages of turbulent movement.

"Once We Met," an effective dramatic duet, had Natalie Rogers and the choreographer both fumbling hesitantly and hurling themselves at each other as they danced their way through a love affair.

During the coda of one dramatic duet, they exchanged a conspiratorial smile before leaving out some vocal flourishes in the final two measures to save their voices for climatic high notes.

Most significantly, the other is in the great dramatic duet which ends act 1 (act 2 in some productions) - the confrontation between the two queens - which gives "the climactic moment something of the immediacy of the spoken theatre.

John Butler's dramatic duet, danced to a recording of its score by Lee Hoiby, depicts Adam and Eve banished from Eden and struggling from bitterness to reconciliation.

Although several examples of choreography by Weidman were shown, the most interesting offering was Humphrey's "Duo-Drama," a dramatic duet to a score by Roy Harris that starred Humphrey and Weidman at its premiere in 1935.

In a Gendang beleq performance, the drummers carry and play gendang and dance a dramatic and confrontational duet.

And there was a dramatic duet in which Ms. Santana swirled a shawl about her, then dropped it to the floor, whereupon Zenón Ramos picked it up and waved it like a bullfighter's cape to lure her.

"Grass," which was created for the Royal Swedish Ballet in 1987, is a dramatic duet to pieces for two pianos by Rachmaninoff.