DANCE REVIEW : Flamenco Suite Shines in Program of Tudor Ballets

The lure was a trio of ballets Antony Tudor choreographed for dance students, but the prize was a sensual flamenco suite at UCI Dance Ensemble’s program Friday at UC Irvine’s Fine Arts Village Theatre.

The powerful but sternly restrained dancing of Nancy Lee Ruyter and the flamboyantly rococo finger curls, struts and flounces of Antonia Rojas-Kabakov, director of the UCI Spanish Dance Ensemble, found their match in the hoarsely passionate singing of Marysol Fuentes and the atmospheric guitar accompaniment of Paco Sevilla and Joel Kabakov.

Each of the Tudor works, introduced at great, loving length by dance professor Olga Maynard, was a revelation, but mostly in the sense that one wondered what they would look like if danced with fuller understanding or greater emotional resources.

The most successfully interpreted of these pieces was the slightest one. In “Little Improvisations” (1953) to Schumann’s “Scenes From Childhood,” the built-in awkwardness of the playful-young-lovers theme worked to the advantage of tense and coltish Jeremie Basmajian and her well-matched partner, Eric Schade. Still, the performance had a stop-and-go quality suggesting that the piece might as well be titled “Four Pantomimes You Can Both Do With a Scarf.”

“Fandango” (1963) is apparently supposed to be a subtly accelerating showdown for five strongly individuated women. Dancers in red, Spanish-flavored costumes promenaded, gossiped and cast deadly glances while one or more of their number broke away to whirl or chop the floor with fierce footwork. This edgy group frequently broke out in sharp volleys of clapping to the brightly percussive music of Padre Antonio Soler. One woman even taunted the others with loud, bratty singing.

Only two of the dancers had clear identities, however. As a result, the action seemed more of a fandango (in the sense of foolish trifling) than Tudor probably intended.

Maynard explained that the four girls in Tudor’s “Sunflowers” (1971) revel innocently in “the Eden of youth” until two men arrive, signaling an end to childhood. But when the curtain rose on the flock of young things in their long, pale dresses, they already seemed somber and distracted, as if they foresaw the little dramas of love and loss and jealousy the men’s presence would incite. Even when the recorded violins began to churn at the end of Janacek’s String Quartet No. 1, no psychic revelation accompanied them.

The program also offered Jean Isaacs’ squeaky-clean “New Age Ceremonial Stomp,” James Penrod’s white-soul-on-point “Mahalia” and the premiere of Israel (El) Gabriel’s “Perjury,” which suggested an unholy homage to Doris Humphrey and German expressionist dance. The final image--a G-string-clad man in extremis before a trio of black-gowned women--looked like prime Pageant of the Masters material.