SURPRISE ENCORES : THE KIROV BALLET SAYS A LONG GOODBY TO L.A.

A triumphant Kirov Ballet bade farewell to an adoring Los Angeles Monday night at Shrine Auditorium.

It wasn’t just an ordinary farewell. It was a farewell embellished with wild applause marathons, indiscriminate standing ovations, ultragenerous showers of Grellian flowers and floods of warm feelings gushing on both sides of the footlights.

At the end of the rather patchy mixed bill that made up the formal part of the program, a slender and dapper figure in black took the stage and worked the crowd. It was Oleg Vinogradov, artistic director of the Kirov.

Applause. Cheers.

A voice on the public-address translated a gracious little speech in which he expressed gratitude for the local hospitality and hope for a continuation of peaceful cultural exchange. More ovations.

Then came the surprise. Although the witching hour of 11 was near, Vinogradov wanted to show us a few more faces of his company. It was encore time.

First came the acrobatic love duet from his own “Knight in the Tiger Skin,” which the company had performed in Vancouver a week earlier.

No announcements were made identifying the repertory or casting. An uneducated eye suggested, however, that the virtuosos doing the stylized groping and intertwining here, to the recycled slush-music of Alexei Machavariani, were Eldar Aliev and Tatiana Ariskina. More ovations.

Vinogradov returned. “You want more?” he asked, in good English. More ovations.

Next came a very somber, very melodramatic, very portentous essay in writhing, collapsing, gnashing of teeth and stripping from prisoner’s rags to flesh-colored jock. This was a trying, tortuous, neo-realist ritual for a very hard-working hero and a static penal chorus.

I think the hero was Evgeny Neff, who does this sort of thing far better than he does Petipa princes. The music--canned, like everything else in the half-hour post-game show--was Albinoni’s Adagio for organ and strings.

The whole wretched thing, fraught with Bejart-vu Angst and pathos, must seem very modern in conservative Leningrad.

More ovations.

Vinogradov returned, grinning. “Once more?” he asked. He meant “ one more.” More ovations.

Out pranced tall Konstantin Zaklinsky and (I think) tiny Irina Chistiakova in white unitards. They executed a fast and cutesy dancing-doll number, full of gags and clever references to balletic manner and folksy indulgence. Good, old-fashioned, high-class vaudeville stuff, well done. More ovations.

“More?” asked the rhetorically impish Vinogradov.

“More!” roared the blissful mob.

Now it was time for a signature valedictory. The taped orchestra sighed the slurpy Saint-Saens sentiment of “The Dying Swan.”

On an empty, pitch-black stage, a single spotlight defined the pathetic form of Galina Mezentseva, possibly the scrawniest ballerina ever to enact the terminal flutters of Fokine’s fowl play. She went through the conventional heart- and feather-rending convolutions as if in a trance, then expired in a gracefully twitching heap. More ovations.

For all we know, the ovations are still raging.

The Kirov may not have displayed the loftiest standards of taste or 20th-Century choreography on this unorthodox occasion. Nevertheless, the company did perform throughout with irresistible conviction, authority and communicative urgency. The ovations, in sentimental context, were deserved.

The predictable portion of the evening had opened with “Chopiniana,” a.k.a. “Les Sylphides.” Following quaint Soviet custom, this dreamy essay in moonstruck romanticism utilized klunky orchestrations by Glazunov and one M. Keller as well as a thumping military march as musical prelude. Compounding the disorientation, the action took place in a harsh blaze of sunlight.

Still, one could find emphatic compensation in the delicate precision of the corps, in the dainty Mazurka and Waltz of Zhanna Ayupova, and in the suave bravura of young Aleksander Lunev as the presumably lovesick poet.

The “Kingdom of the Shades” scene from “La Bayadere” found the legendary Kirov corps performing the kaleidoscopic arabesques roughly and with insensitive speed. Wrapped in a billowing, shocking-blue clown suit, Sergei Berezhnoi introduced a tired, barely competent Solor.

None of this mattered, however, when the willowy Altynai Assyulmuratova redefined the ethereal pathos of Nikiya.

The anticlimactic “Paquita” divertissements were led on this occasion by Lubov Kunakova (prim and neat), Konstantin Zaklinsky (dashing and not-so-neat) and Sergei Vikharev (eager and not-so-neat).

Luckily, with the mighty Kirov the sum always manages somehow to equal more than the parts.