DANCE REVIEW : ‘Sea Shadow,’ ‘Reflections’ by Joffrey

Connoisseurs of cloying lyricism ought to adore the new Joffrey Ballet program of revived home-grown divertissements.

Introduced Tuesday in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the bill provides a gallery of Terpsichorean goo, from the subaqueous kitsch of Gerald Arpino’s “Sea Shadow” (1962) through the neoclassic platitudes of Arpino’s “Reflections” (1971) to the leaden nostalgia of Robert Joffrey’s “Remembrances” pas de deux (1973)--plus the familiar overkill of Arpino’s inescapable “Suite Saint-Saens” (1978).

In each ballet, there’s a fatal disassociation between sight and sound--between hectic, flashy and arbitrary dance patterns and music that is much slower and which builds more steadily, seamlessly, organically to its crest.

“Sea Shadow” was originally set to the second movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, but when the Ravel estate refused to permit choreographers to use works not composed for dancing, Arpino substituted a commissioned score by Michael Colgrass. This season, the Ravel accompaniment has been restored, but the piece looks as unmusical as ever--with the barechested Tom Mossbrucker uncurling under a pier to discover Valerie Madonia in a unitard, her hair down, desperate to be lifted.

Their exploratory relationship and the liquidity of the movement style suggest Robbins’ “Afternoon of a Faun” with an undertow of Ashton’s “Ondine.” But the restless, generalized swoopings and surgings are hallmarks of nobody else but the terminally glib Gerald A.

Mossbrucker and Madonia can’t be faulted; they expertly deliver every gymnastic feat in this swoony charade, just as the three couples and four subsidiary women in “Reflections” endow the vacant bravura choreography with a sense of high occasion. But in this formal showpiece to Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo” Variations, the emotionalism of the duets looks forced, superimposed in the same way that the virtuoso step combinations appear reflexive or off-the-rack.

New to the previously reviewed “Remembrances” excerpt, Jodie Gates and Ashley Wheater danced with great freshness and fluidity. John Miner conducted authoritative performances of the Ravel and Tchaikovsky scores, with Stanley Babin the capable pianist in the former and cellist Nils Oliver superbly accomplished in the latter, except for the rough finale.