DANCE REVIEW : ‘Nureyev and Friends’ in Pasadena

If Southern California sometimes seems the Elephant’s Burial Ground of ballet--a place where decrepit superstars can go through the motions until they drop--blame Rudolf Nureyev, a man who has raised trading-on-past-glory to an art form.

Nureyev used to be a dancer. But, at 50, he is so far over the hill that the hill itself is nothing but a mirage. At Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Saturday, he looked slimmer than on other “Nureyev and Friends” showcase programs in the Southland during the past two years, but no less feeble. The issue isn’t merely age. Lynn Seymour, Nureyev’s distinguished former colleague from the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, delivered genuinely powerful dancing on the same program at age 49.

But Nureyev himself looked long past her achievement. In familiar repertory--George Balanchine’s neoclassic “Apollo,” the postmodern Daniel Ezralow/David Parsons vehicle “Two Brothers” and Jose Limon’s Shakespearean dance drama “The Moor’s Pavane”--the best of what Nureyev could muster qualified more as demonstration than performance, the worst as flagrant fakery.

He can still execute some steps cleanly, but the almost insolent ease of his youth has been replaced by desperate strain. To prepare for simple tasks, he hunches over, as if bracing himself; for complex ones, his whole body crimps up. Thus the noble line that is the hallmark of classical dancing is gnarled almost beyond recognition.

Moreover, Nureyev’s

stamina erodes so quickly that midway through each of these one-act ballets, he’s already utterly without physical force or dramatic presence. So just when Apollo must dominate the muses, when one brother confronts the other for the last time, when Othello yields to murderous jealousy, Nureyev is obviously exhausted: gasping for air, flailing away, running on Empty.

To The Faithful, none of this matters. They believe that Nureyev’s magnificent dancing in the 1960s and early ‘70s earned him perpetual adoration, that he is a true icon: the more dilapidated, the more venerable. Trouble is, you can buy a videotape of one of the thrilling early-Nureyev performances for about the same price as a “Nureyev and Friends” ticket. No, canned dancing is never the real thing, but it will convey a moreauthentic sense of the man’s greatness than the hollow, narcissistic charades at the Pasadena Civic on Saturday.

For those interested in dance as a living art, the evening had its compensations: the beauty, warmth and skill of six young members from Nureyev’s Paris Opera Ballet and, in particular, Seymour’s vibrant performances.

In the first phase of a comeback, Seymour danced as if she had something to prove. Overemphasizing the dynamic shifts in both the Emilia role of “The Moor’s Pavane” and in the Frederick Ashton solo “Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan” (created for her in 1975 and ‘76), she aimed for maximum immediacy as if announcing that her dancing needs no nostalgia to validate it. True enough, though if she relaxes, modulates her effects and loses some more weight, her spectacular mastery of dance-rubato will become even more impressive.

Accompanied by pianist Paul Connelly, she filled the mercurial Isadora evocation with flamboyant gestural statements that almost always looked completely spontaneous--beckoning arms, rippling hands, flower-petals tossed to form a pink aura around her red hair. In contrast, her Emilia capitalized on weighty deliberation and an intense, almost pitiless concentration that disintegrated powerfully in the aftermath of tragedy.

As both Desdemona and Terpsichore in “Apollo,” Claude de Vulpian danced personably but with no real insight about style; in each work, but especially in the Balanchine, her movements often appeared flicked out, almost careless, and they never really added up to a portrayal. However, this proved a stronger “Apollo” than the travesties presented on some previous “Nureyev and Friends” programs, due to the informed and diligent dancing of Carole Arbo (Calliope) and Elisabeth Platel (Polyhymnia).

The long-limbed, commanding Platel also danced a rather steely Black Swan pas de deux opposite Manuel Legris (elegant but technically unreliable) and, looking less forced, a solo in the pas de six from Bournonville’s “Napoli” (with all her Parisian colleagues). Here Legris regained much of the remarkable flair he displayed in the Nureyev/Paris Opera Ballet “Cinderella” in Orange County last summer, and Vulpian also looked marginally more assured. But the most scrupulous Bournonville dancing came from Isabelle Guerin--stylish, womanly, thoughtful: a major artist.

However, in excellence and prominence, the evening arguably belonged to Laurent Hilaire. As Iago in “The Moor’s Pavane,” this Paris Opera Ballet etoile delivered every modern-dance angularity with sardonic sharpness, and he also partnered Nureyev capably in the gymnastic rigors of “Two Brothers.”

But, for all his versatility, Hilaire is essentially a classical aristocrat, one who manages to dance ballet choreography with awesome refinement, perfect placement and a disarming air of sweet generosity. So it was not surprising to find this textbook-pure virtuoso at his best in Nureyev’s version of the Petipa “Sleeping Beauty” pas de deux (opposite the radiant, accomplished Guerin) and in the breezy, demanding “Napoli” excerpt.

If audiences cared less about celebrity and more about dancing , the program Saturday would justly have been called “Hilaire and Friends.” Or “Guerin and Friends.” Or “Seymour and New Acquaintances.” For audiences as well as icons, the past can be hard to give up but the cruel and glorious reality of dancing is that it exists only in the present tense. And by the standards of 1989--standards that Rudolf Nureyev helped to set--nobody danced Apollo or Othello or the “elder” brother on Saturday in Pasadena, nobody at all.

Except in Seymour’s Isadora solo, taped music accompanied all the dancing.