ANNIVERSARY TOUR : ROYAL DANE SOLOISTS IN EL CAJON

Of the handful of ballet companies that loom large in dance history, only the Royal Danish Ballet and one or two others have preserved as a living tradition the distinctive repertories and styles that once distinguished them.

Scandalously, it has now been 26 years since the full Danish company last appeared in Southern California, so Copenhagen’s unique legacy of intricate, openhearted classical dancing has become available to us chiefly through the Soloists, a pioneering company-within-a-company formed in 1976.

Most of the selections danced on the Soloists’ current 10th anniversary American tour are familiar from previous visits--but there is now a significant difference in the group’s stature. Frank Andersen (who co-founded the Soloists with Dinna Bjorn) is currently the director of the parent company, too.

Thus, the generation of Danish dancers that helped inspire a new worldwide appreciation of the great 19th-Century Danish choreographer August Bournonville--and discovered enough clues in old musical scores, vintage films and memories of their teachers to mount reconstructions of lost Bournonville ballets--is now in power in Copenhagen. The future looks as bright as the past.

At the spacious and well-equipped East County Performing Arts Center in El Cajon, the Soloists again ventured the festive, communal pas de six and tarantella from the last act of Bournonville’s “Napoli” on Saturday afternoon--with the veteran, authoritative Andersen and Bjorn shaking their tambourines alongside a new generation of Danish virtuosi.

Consider Alexander Kolpin, a boy wonder in the Ib Andersen mold with the widest smile in ballet since Anthony Dowell (of that other Royal Ballet) and a brilliance in batterie all his own. Once he gets his terminations under more consistent control, look out!

Consider, too, Anne Adair--a dark-haired, diminutive charmer with an extra generosity to all her dancing though not yet, perhaps, quite enough drive for maximum soubrette sparkle--and the impossibly slender and elegant Peter Bo Bendixen, still rather stiff and impersonal in port de bras but obviously fated for eventual Henning Kronstam-style status as a resident danseur -dreamboat.

Misidentified in the house program, Bendixen and the unassuming but accomplished Ib Jeppesen made the sprightly, quasi-competitive Jockey dance from Bournonville’s last ballet, “From Siberia to Moscow” (1876), a highlight of the small-scale, piano-accompanied rarities that opened the program.

Reconstructed (and partially choreographed) by Bjorn, the “Dance of Three Graces” from “The Muses of the Native Country” (1840) displayed Bournonville’s ability to glorify the Romantic ballerina--five years before Jules Perrot’s celebrated “Le Pas de Quatre.” Marianne Rindholt’s dancing hardly proved the last word in steadiness, but both Bjorn and Beneditke Paaske danced the brief, lyrical solos and longer, formal ensembles with ideal delicacy.

Bjorn also expertly danced her revival of Bournonville’s gypsy solo from “Il Trovatore” (1865), but the scheduled expansion of this piece was dropped--not yet ready, said a company official.

A major novelty on this tour, “Dance of Joy” from Hans Beck’s 1909 “Little Mermaid,” provided insight into the stylistic continuity of Danish dancing with its step combinations of great speed, complexity and boldness.

Alas, due to the reported illness of Anne Marie Vessel, this Bournonvillesque divertissem e nt was danced in an improvised version on Saturday afternoon: three couples instead of four in the opening and closing sections, with an extra man added (temporarily) for the starburst formations midway through.

To taped accompaniment, Kolpin and the saucer-eyed Heidi Ryom teased their way through the “Flower Festival” pas de deux (the best-known Bournonville piece internationally), managing to render the choreography with absolute clarity while never appearing to work at the steps. In particular, the way mime elements became dance motifs--how the ballerina flirtatiously turning away when her partner looks at her early on is later reflected in her abrupt changes of position on pointe --emerged with a witty, easygoing lucidity.

Hans van Manen’s mock-balletic “Septet Extra” completed the program, its jokes somehow more winning than they seemed in 1983 if only because the ballet used some of the same music as Gerald Arpino’s “Suite Saint-Saens” (for the Joffrey Ballet)--and Van Manen’s yawns, sleepy stretches and other gestural non sequiturs now served to undercut the lock-step cheeriness and hard-sell bravura that make Arpino’s ballet so fulsome.