DANCE REVIEW : Rustavi Arrives in L.A.

Onstage at the Wiltern Theatre, 20 men of the Rustavi Company from Soviet Georgia enter in a line from the right, their faces in profile, their arms across one another’s shoulders and their legs sharply kicking out and pulling back as if in a repeated salute.

As they move into five-man lines and then circle formations, the dancers change hand-holds and step-patterns without disturbing the severe formality of the piece, the sense of a single consciousness directing a single body. And as they exit, their heads and upper bodies remain absolutely steady as they do a unison skip-step, with legs tucked up high in the air behind them. . . .

This venerable Georgian-Adzar military dance called “Khorumi” may lack the virtuoso turns and knee-drops that Rustavi unleashes during its “Mtiuluri” finale, or the sense of danger in the spark-spitting sword fights of “Parikaoba”, but it sets a standard for corps unanimity that few companies of any kind could surpass. (Even the Rustavi women don’t come close in their serene, gliding “Narnani” showpiece.)

Most of all, the restraint and dignity of “Khorumi” reveals Rustavi’s fundamental respect for its cultural resources--and, for audiences wary of the corrupt charades that often pass for folk dance these days, that revelation brings a great shock of relief.

Where the better-known Georgian State Dance Company (seen at the Pantages in 1988) balleticized Georgian dance technique and crammed its choreography (including “Khorumi”) with the maximum number of stunts, Rustavi is the real thing: an authentic, unashamed folk troupe.

Like the Don Cossacks, it assumes that its American audiences actually like folk music and dance, that we want something more than another evening of ballet divertissements and gymnastic displays staged in pseudo-ethnic style.

We want it, we get it: for starters, a virtual seminar in Georgian vocal tradition, courtesy of Badri Toidze and his men’s chorus. Usually unaccompanied, the work songs, patriotic anthems, lyrical ballads and humorous ditties here each seem to exploit a different technique, another kind of attack--though many of them are alike in their emphasis on vivacity and thrust over weight.

Other folk companies use singers as filler: time out for the dancers to change costumes. Rustavi, however, taps into the new, worldwide interest in antique choral music with a generous sampling of regional specialties. The public responds with all-American dog-yelps--a vocal tradition of our own. After intermission, many audience members carry Rustavi CDs or cassettes and intently listen to every word of a language they’re never going to speak. For once, the dancers can wait.

Instrumental interludes highlight the Georgian pipe, drum and lute, while the dance accompaniments are often accordion-based. Thus, again, weight is nullified as even the most assaultive dances float on a kind of sonic breeze. In addition, Georgian style keeps the women skimming the stage as if hydro-cushioned and the men springing onto their toes as if about to take flight.

No, contrary to what you may have heard, the Rustavi men don’t dance on pointe--their feet here are crimped or sickled, almost claw-like. (By its very nature, pointe requires a pointed foot, one that extends the line of the leg. Toes that curl under are something else entirely: as different as an open hand and a closed fist.) Nor are Georgians the only people to dance in this extremely difficult manner; you can also find folkloric dancers in Turkey poised on the knuckles of their bent toes.

But the gushy misinformation preceding the Rustavi engagement shouldn’t negate the company’s remarkable achievement: Choreographer Fridon Sulaberidze shows us movement bristling with exciting angularities, asymmetries and gestural references to Georgian life. The men’s vocabulary looks particularly rich, powerful, self-sufficient and you just know that these guys wouldn’t rather be doing cabrioles or coupe jetes.

Sometimes we may be reminded of ballet--in “Mountain Suite,” for example, when the women appear in costumes startlingly similar to those in the original Nijinsky “Sacre du Printemps.” But that’s our obsession.

Fact is, Rustavi has rediscovered something pure and essential, bringing it to the stage with its essence intact. In folk-dance terms, that’s pretty much like the recent political events in Eastern Europe: a repudiation of a corrupt history. We can only marvel at the result.