BALLET REVIEW : Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Americana

The Dance Theatre of Harlem, which returned to Pasadena Civic Auditorium Saturday night as part of the Ambassador concert series, brims with versatility, stellar talent and gutsy spirit. Nearing its 20th birthday, the company can do just about anything.

And it does. That may be the problem.

The inaugural program here--an agenda originally put together for the New York International Festival last summer--suggested that Arthur Mitchell’s ensemble still faces something of a stylistic identity crisis. The dancing was terrific. The vehicles were problematic.

The evening began with the safe ceremony of Balanchine’s “Serenade.” This signature piece has been performed in the past with greater suavity and delicacy, but much can be said for the heroic grandeur of the Harlem version. The robust corps was led here, as on most key occasions since 1979, by the willowy Virgina Johnson and the emotionally tense Lorraine Graves.

So much for in-house tradition. For novelties, Mitchell turned his charges to two samples of recycled Americana.

First came Eugene Loring’s “Billy the Kid,” which at 50 is suddenly enjoying an epidemic of new productions (the Joffrey happened to be performing a similar version at virtually the same moment, 8 miles down the freeway). Then, for a folksy anticlimax, came “John Henry,” Mitchell’s first ballet in 13 years. Neither challenge brought out the best in the company.

The bold narrative stances of “Billy the Kid” tend to look superficial in the harsh light of 1989. What used to seem vibrant now seems merely quaint. The sparseness of choreographic development used to seem appropriately terse; now it just seems evasive.

Nevertheless, all need not be lost. If care is lavished on every gestural detail, if the dance tautly projects the drama, Loring’s original scheme can still exert some pathos. Unfortunately, this production, staged by Virginia Doris in drab decors by Robert Fletcher, settles for dutiful approximations and inadvertent distortions.

On Saturday, the company went through the prescribed motions with loose-limbed eagerness. The galloping cowboys earned their automatic laughs. The victimized hero strutted his stuff with beefy allure. His mythic sidekicks kicked on cue. The melodrama unfolded with speed.

It all looked too casual, too easy, too comfortable. The cast repeatedly smudged the line that separates realism and stylization. Continuity was jerky. Characterizations emerged bland.

Eddie J. Shellman introduced a tough, muscular, super-macho Billy who breaks no hearts. Hughes Magen made the multiple villain, Alias, deft if not particularly sinister. Stephanie Dabney exuded proper lyricism as the Mother who happens to be reincarnated as Billy’s Sweetheart (calling Dr. Freud). Lowell Smith conveyed nonchalant bravado as Pat Garrett.

Poor Billy may have been troubled on this occasion. Still, he fared better than poor John Henry.

Mitchell’s little ballet about the laborer who dares challenge the steam drill really isn’t a ballet at all. It is a feeble collection of tired Broadway cliches, connected with a thread of artificially sweetened folk songs.

Shellman, having just died a picturesque death as Billy, returned unreasonably to perform identical favors for the steel-drivin’ hero with the hammer in his hand. Mitchell asked little of him beyond passive poses embellished with some basic-ballet pyrotechnics.

The figures around him resembled props. The corps did a lot of irrelevant, ill-focused, ill-motivated twirling, whirling and gyrating. It looked oddly improvised.

Choreographic invention wasn’t exactly plentiful here. Frenzied enthusiasm and show-biz vulgarity could only cover so much.

The twangy musical pastiche was conceived and conducted, onstage, by Milton Rosenstock. The traditional songs, entrusted in New York to Leon Bibb, were earnestly delivered here by Josh White Jr. Carl Michel assembled the el-cheapo contemporary costumes and skeletal railroad engine on the cyclorama.

A good time was had by some.