EDWARD GOREY’S DANSE MACABRE

When David Gordon first told Mikhail Baryshnikov about the new work he had in mind for American Ballet Theatre, he described it as “Edward Gorey-esque” in content and imagery. Certainly its 19th-Century style, whimsical forms of death and deliberate ambiguity of effect reflected the distinctive sensibility and preoccupations of Gorey’s four-dozen hand-lettered, illustrated books and occasional stage projects.

Before Gordon knew it, Gorey had been hired to design the production.

Budgeted at $55,000, “Murder” is hardly as elaborate as the long-running Broadway “Dracula” that won Gorey a Tony Award in 1978. As Gorey recalls, “I was told there wasn’t much money for the ballet, so there wouldn’t be full sets. But there would be props (a doorway, a chaise, a laboratory table, the coffins)--all pretty much in black-and-white and gray, and all slightly askew and misshapen like ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.’ “The costumes followed David’s idea: a basic unitard with things added over. He sees things in quite simple modern dance terms and he’s always been a genius costumer himself. Much of ‘Murder’ sort of suggested itself and there really wasn’t all that much for me to do.”

Gorey denies ever consciously trying to develop an antique drawing style (“It materialized somewhere between my 18th and 21st year and it was more or less full-blown.”). But he concedes that his work conjures up “a never-never world between 1880 and 1910. I usually don’t get much past the ‘20s.”

At 61, he divides his time between a New York apartment and a house in Barnstable, Mass., that he shares with three massive cats. He currently takes an etching class at Cape Cod Conservatory of Music and Art and notes that his 34 years’ experience in pen-and-ink book illustration doesn’t make it any easier. “Sometimes I think that my life would have been completely different,” he says with a dramatic sigh, “if I had ever learned to draw.”

Gorey keeps up with all kinds of films (“I’ve seen every mad-slasher movie ever made.”), is a voracious theatergoer (“I like plays where everyone is detestable”) and cultivates what he calls “a passionate attachment to the ballets of George Balanchine.” Over the years he has contributed generously to New York City Ballet by designing boutique items: everything from posters to potholders. “Sometimes I think, ‘Oh dear, I wish I had a penny for every towel they sold,’ ” he remarks.

His previous ballet commissions include the Royal Ballet production of Jerome Robbins’ “The Concert,” the Ballets Trockadero “Giselle” (Act 2) and the Eglevsky Ballet “Swan Lake” (Act 2).

But he seldom sees the productions he designs and regrets that he allowed a friend to take him to a matinee of his “Dracula” six months after it opened. “I hated it,” he says. “Here was an old-fashioned play being camped up mercilessly. I felt the whole production was a hodgepodge of conflicting styles. I did like the special effects, though: The bats were wonderful.”

Like Gordon and Baryshnikov, Gorey faces Romantic excess with humor but no condescension. “I’m a great admirer of the 19th Century,” he declares. “I think people then knew much more what was going on, were more in touch with what life is really like, than we are. I’d prefer to see a good, rousing 19th-Century melodrama than something by Robert Wilson any day.”