Music and Dance Reviews : Theatre Ballet of Canada Tells a Good Story

The Theatre Ballet of Canada adheres to truth in advertising.

When the 10-year-old company performed Tuesday at Pepperdine University it put top priority on dramatic context rather than choreographic ritual and proved the rightness of such a choice.

The 10 dancers who comprise the company, now directed by Frank Augustyn, showed themselves off better in scenario ballets with a contemporary focus than those dependent on formal, abstract maneuvers and density of steps--so much so that one could actually see a discrepancy between the two.

But make no mistake, in the right repertory the Canadians are fully authoritative, thoroughly engaging. And, luckily, most of what they danced at the little Smothers Theatre was grateful.

Imagination ran high in pieces set to music with narrative. Danny Grossman’s and Judy Jarvis’ whimsical “Bella,” for instance, seemed like a cross between something Paul Taylor and Pilobolus might do.

To a recording of Puccini’s “La Boheme” (Mimi’s death scene), followed by the Humming Chorus from “Madama Butterfly,” Rachel Wates and Carlos Rogue Loyola straddled a giant nursery horse and played out a gently gymnastic duet--accounting for some of the music’s tenderness but in juvenile counterpoint to the tragedy at hand.

They looked like marionettes endowed with expressive plasticity--especially the upside down Wates, whose bare feet were often in the air articulating with high, curvy arches. The piece had a strange and unlikely effectiveness.

So did Lawrence Gradus’ “Jeux-Poeme Danse,” which used the episodic, high-voltage drama of Debussy as inspiration for its black-and-white, Edward Gorey-based ballet. This time, however, the whimsy was phantasmagoric and sharply characterized, with a turbaned vamp, a bridal couple and a crooked old crone among the characters.

Of the pure movement works, only one taxed the dancers beyond their professional zone: Antony Tudor’s 1971 “Continuo.” Created, ironically, for his students at Juilliard, it should not have posed a problem.

But as the program’s single exercise in classicism and one that is for the Pachelbel Canon what Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco” is for Bach, the difficulties were dangerously exposed. Too bad.