Dance and Music Reviews : Long Beach Ballet Offers Version of ‘Petrushka’

Something has gone wrong with the Long Beach Ballet production of the “Petrushka.” While not an out-and-out disaster, the scaled-down version of Fokine’s ballet, seen Saturday afternoon on the small thrust stage of the Center Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center, now looks surprisingly sketchy and insignificant.

Dancers noodle about aimlessly or clump in groups and do nothing; opportunities for character vignettes pass by, unexplored; dance and mime distinctions blur.

Because company artistic director David Wilcox and former associate director Christopher Tabor have excised the episode of the trained bear (clumsily stitching together the music before and after it), you would think that they wanted to emphasize visual rhythm and momentum. But no.

Just when Stravinsky’s score is going crazy with foot-tapping rhythms and joyous, overlapping melody for the milkmaids joining the coachmen, for instance, everyone on stage seems to be dancing virtually one simple-minded thing.

In the title role, guest dancer George de la Pena offered a goofy, sweet characterization, a puppet more easy to laugh at than feel pity for. His best moments relied upon athletic prowess--flights of transport with the Ballerina (a properly vacuous Tzer-Shing Wang); a (wrongly) interpolated, star-turn jump through the portrait of the Charlatan. (Shades of the Nijinsky leap out the window in “Le Spectre de la Rose.”)

Francisco Martinez made a impish, unthreatening Charlatan; Edward Cueto, a menacing Moor.

The company looked far less incisive and accomplished here than it did in the two works--each receiving first performances--that completed the program.

Julia Ellis’ “Twilight Suite” offers a series of dance routines spanning the Charleston to the Big Band Era (not necessarily in that order). One waited to see hints of satire or inventive use of period idioms, but Ellis decided to play it straight and safe. The results were modest but danced strongly by the company. The UC Riverside Jazz Ensemble, directed by Bill Helms, provided spirited accompaniment.

Robert Sund’s off-kilter neoclassical “Ravelesque” proved most attractive, enlisting the lyric talents of Orna Harari and Russell Capps, the jazz swagger of Maricar Drilon and Chris Sircello and a well-drilled corps of six women.