Review: A dance ‘Tour de Force,’ minus the force, at Segerstrom Center

The gala-style ballet program is an audience favorite, its international cast packed with principal dancers who normally don’t perform together. You might get stars from the Mariinsky, the Bolshoi, England’s Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, all in one night.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa opened its dance season Saturday with such a night, “Tour de Force III.” If you perused the program’s stellar names, they seemed to line up similarly to “Tour” I (2009) and II (2011).

The difference was in the ballets. “Tour” producer Sergei Danilian wanted this show to focus on new pieces by lesser-known choreographers. As it happened, dancer injury and visa troubles intervened and Russia’s Diana Vishneva and England’s Edward Watson were no shows, causing other dominoes to fall, too, including the cancellation of the 2015 piece “Zeitgeist” by the Royal Ballet’s Alastair Marriott. Next time.

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Shuffled in as substitute was Russell Maliphant’s new “Silent Echo,” a disappointing wasted effort for the gifted duo Natalia Osipova and the Ukrainian-born sensation Sergei Polunin, in his West Coast debut. (If you haven’t seen him in the dance video of Hozier’s “Take Me to the Church” — 15.6 million views and counting — it’s a worthwhile four minutes on YouTube.)

With the dust settled, “Tour de Force III” ended up with a logical shape: works by two up-and-coming Russian dance-makers in the first half and veterans Marcelo Gomes of ABT and Maliphant after intermission.

Maxim Petrov’s “Le Divertissement du Roi” was an odd, but pleasantly entertaining curtain-opener, a counterintuitive direction to venture for a twenty-something choreographer. In five scenes, Petrov presents a fanciful theatrical at the court of Louis XIV, with the Sun King himself as soloist, to recorded selections by Jean-Philippe Rameau (“Les Indes Galantes,” among others). I did wonder if Petrov was really playing it straight here, and the audience chuckled at Soslan Kulaev as the master of ceremony, announcing upcoming scenes in a distinctive marbles-in-mouth French.

But “Divertissement” dripped with sincerity and purpose, celebrating the glory of the small detail and refined dancing. Petrov imagined a neo-early-classical style of gracefully curved arms, delicate upper-body shifts, little jumps and what we might consider old-fashioned jokiness. The corps de ballet of four men wiggled their fingers sinisterly to portray little devils. Philipp Stepin was the appropriately regal dancing King, even when pretending to be drunk and careening off balance. Backdrops taken from 17th century drawings and Tatiana Noginova’s costumes of red velvet breeches added to the ballet’s old world spirit.

Vladimir Varnava’s “Clay,” danced to composer Darius Milhaud’s “The Creation of the World,” presented a view of nascent humanity. Beginning with a clever clump of three men and three women holding on to one another, they eventually split apart while remaining emotionally reliant upon one another. Solos and group dances were cutesy and tedious, with movement for its own sake failing to provide sustenance.

Gomes’ “Tristesse” suffered from a similar malady. An extremely likable and emotionally truthful dancer, Gomes has been choreographing for a while. “Tristesse” cites inspiration from the poetry of Frenchman Paul Eluard, but this felt like a most personal endeavor. Joined by Joaquin De Luz, Denis Matvienko and the sensational Friedemann Vogel, Gomes presented scenes of companionship, love and, ultimately abandonment. This is well-worn material, and Gomes has an overly obvious choreographic touch, all the more unfortunate given that he was using the lovely Chopin Etudes, played with gorgeous passion by pianist Dimitri Dover.

We had to wait till the night’s end for “Silent Echo” and its expected fireworks, so the fact that it was a dud was all the more crushing. Maliphant and a frequent collaborator, lighting designer Michael Hulls, are guilty of the visual tease. Overhead spotlights go on and too soon off on Osipova and Polunin, with only their whirling upper bodies visible. A pounding score by Scanner, a.k.a. British composer and artist Robin Rimbaud, added to the discomfort. Solos for each dancer were tantalizingly brief, and seemingly endless visions of Osipova whipping her long hair were maddening. Here were the stars, but the “tour de force” was missing.

Maybe next time.

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