MODERN MURKINESS : THE JOFFREY BALLET’S ‘ALTERED STATES’

The curtain rises on a dark stage swirling with primordial mist. It is very mysterious and, no doubt, very meaningful.

The clouds ooze into the orchestra pit. The capacity audience at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion loves it. Never underestimate the power of dry ice.

Soon, far upstage, a pair of limbs punctuate the mist. Then another pair. Slowly we make out a couple of human forms: A thin, leotarded lady lies face-up atop a muscular, similarly attired gentleman. The leotards are skin-colored but decorated on one side by a bloody network of veins.

The dancers rise from the mist, which is evaporating pretty quickly anyway, and look very dour.

They strike portentous, elemental poses. They embark on a series of competitive contortions and stretches, leaps and catches, twists and twirls.

There is music. It sounds like bad movie music. When it is loud and somber, the protagonists do tough, angular, complex, oh-so-modern things. When the music turns sweet and cloying, the dancers melt into the balletic maneuvers of deja vu convention.

When things get really intense, echoes of the vein designs flash like lightning on the backdrop.

The dancers keep very busy. They could be Adam and Eve. They could be Mr. and Mrs. Nijinsky enacting a bad dream. They could be fugitives from 4,763 half-remembered and best-forgotten modern and not-so-modern ballets.

Finally, some one turns the steam machine back on. Our troubled but dauntless hero and heroine retreat to their original positions upstage. As the curtain mercifully falls, the dancers wave bye-bye through the murk. Not a moment too soon.

This wide-ranging compilation of cliches, introduced by the Joffrey Ballet on Friday, is called “Altered States.” Gail Kachadurian, an alumna of Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, provided the stubbornly straight-faced and straight-laced choreography.

The hand-me-down science-fiction music, adapted from the Ken Russell film of the same name, has been cranked out by none less than John Corigliano. He ought to be ashamed.

Natalie Garfinkle has painted the veins on the body stockings. No one takes credit for the veins on the cyclorama.

Dawn Caccamo and Glenn Edgerton dance and lunge and crouch with suavity, with unflagging energy and apparent dedication to their cause. Too bad the cause is hopeless. This one should have stayed in the workshop whence it came.

The other novelty on the program, a pas de six from Arthur Saint-Leon’s “La Vivandiere,” proves cheerier. This dainty relic from the Paris of 1847 has graced the Joffrey repertory for a decade, but Los Angeles caught up with it only on this occasion.

As reconstructed by Ann Hutchinson Guest, it is a charming bit of antique bravura fluff. The young Joffrey dancers perform it with delicacy, accuracy and speed. Edward Stierle, the lone male on the premises, makes up with brio for what he lacks in technical perfection. Tina LeBlanc complements him with pert elegance. The supporting girls--Cameron Basden, Jodie Gates, Victoria Pasquale and Kim Sagami--are unfailingly fleet and prim.

It is all very, very nice, if you happen to like old pastels.

The characteristically mixed bill opened with the snazzy exotica of the Massine/Cocteau/Picasso “Parade.” It closed on popular terra moderna with Paul Taylor’s “Arden Court.”