Dance and Music Reviews : Bolshoi’s Liepa Pairs With N.Y.’s Kozlova at UC Irvine

The black-tie crowd wanted circus, and circus is what it got.

To cheers and the inevitable standing ovation, Bolshoi principal Andris Liepa led New York City Ballet principal Valentina Kozlova back on stage to repeat the coda of the flashy Petipa-derived “Corsaire” pas de deux at the end of a benefit program Saturday at the Fine Arts Village Theatre on the UC Irvine campus.

The audience then went into a fit of ecstasy, whooping and hollering and clapping on the beat of every fouette and turn as if it were at a sports event. Kozlova looked slightly embarrassed by it all.

But at least the repeat gave Liepa an opportunity to partner her better and provide a smoother, more secure end to the piece.

Kozlova had been remarkable. Light on point, generous in phrasing, she danced with warmth and elegance, offering charged arabesques and radiant extensions. She finished a series of embellished fouettes in her Variation with pin-point exactness and seeming ease.

Liepa was a reserved, out-classed swashbuckler. Despite spectacular elevation in leaps and virtuosic scissor kicks in mid-air, he delivered a surprisingly low circuit of turns in his Variation, his arms and torso pushing downward against any upward trajectory.

Nor was there much chemistry between the two, for all the stylized deference of the curtain calls.

In fact, rather oddly, both had loaded more personality into the pas de deux from Balanchine’s “Apollo” in the first part of the program, as if they misconceived of it as a character dance from a 19th-Century ballet.

She made a sunny, smiling Terpsichore. He was a coltish, boyish Apollo. Both were more like kids playing at the foot of the mountain than Olympian figures ready to ascend the summit of supreme art.

Both also rounded and softened the choreographer’s angularities, and certain signature motifs, such as the blinking effect of Apollo’s clenching and unclenching his fists, simply did not read.

The audience, however, was determined to treat the Balanchine work as if it were just another showpiece, launching into applause at the “swimming lesson” as if it were a circus trick.

Marring the whole evening was a snap-happy photographer from Coast Ballet Theatre, the San Juan Capistrano-based school-would be company that was sharing the benefits of the program with the UC Irvine dance department.

Coast Ballet apparently paid for Kozlova’s not-inexpensive appearance and therefore felt entitled to accumulate a picture portfolio at the expense of the audience’s enjoyment and concentration. Complaints to the house manager during intermission went unheeded.

The rest of the program, which featured the UC Irvine Dance Ensemble, was previously reviewed.