DANCE REVIEW : Oakland Ballet Reconstructs ‘Le Train Bleu’

The great secret of the Oakland Ballet’s newly reconstructed “Le Train Bleu” is immediacy. The setting by sculptor Henri Laurens may slice an ordinary beach landscape into exotic Cubist planes and angles, but we instantly recognize it and its inhabitants: sleek bathing beauties in designer swimwear (by Coco Chanel, no less) and hot musclemen on the make. If we connect with this long-lost 1924 “operette dansee” through our own direct observation and experience, so do the dancers. “Train Bleu” may be a fabled relic of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, but it’s also the ancestor of every surf frolic from “The Boy Friend” to “Beach Blanket Bingo.” These young Californians understand it perfectly. Cast as seaside “poules” and “gigolos,” they revel in the witty mock athleticism of Bronislava Nijinska’s choreography, along with the preening narcissism that she so inventively filters through classical style.

The pantomimic sexual byplay devised by Jean Cocteau also seems second nature to them--and that’s crucial, because “Train Bleu” is very much concerned with people selling themselves to one another. Sometimes the score by Darius Milhaud becomes an ironic comment on this lust-and-sand milieu--rather like Nijinska’s pointed references to “Giselle” and “The Sleeping Beauty”--but elsewhere the use of familiar ‘20s idioms makes it sound like pop records playing in nearby hotels.

Although both Irina Nijinska (the choreographer’s daughter) and Frank W. D. Ries (a Cocteau specialist) had to rely on guesswork as well as scholarship in assembling their reconstruction, “Le Train Bleu” always feels fully alive in the present tense.

Indeed, this insistently trivial and topical collaboration--which also originally enlisted the contributions of Pablo Picasso and Anton Dolin--seems infinitely closer to us than any of the dance masterworks created by Nijinska or her brother, Vaslav Nijinsky. As the irresistible “Beau Gosse” (Dolin’s character), Michael Lowe can’t smoothly switch between mime, gymnastics and classical bravura, so the role looks imposed on him rather than a custom-tailored tour de force. But Abra Rudisill makes every seductive flapper mannerism newly incendiary as “Perlouse” (originally danced by Lydia Sokolova), a portrayal exactly on target.

Rudisill also gives a valiant but muted performance as Caroline in the company’s valiant but muted production of “Jardin aux Lilas,” with Lowe, again, cast as her lover.

This Sallie Wilson staging of Antony Tudor’s 1936 classic settles for clarity when it needs much more richness of interpretation--especially in gestural expression.

Agnes de Mille’s aptly titled “Inconsequentials” represents a kind of notebook: miscellaneous ballet lore and ironic commentary collected over the years and arranged in 1983 (after two previous versions) to a selection of Schubert piano and vocal music. The piece presents itself as a cheery, pseudo-folk divertissement in elegant classical style, but along the way there are unexpectedly trenchant observations about fatuous male virtuosi, the rhetoric of dance-drama and the role of women in ballet.

Some of us would rather hear De Mille speak on these subjects than watch them season a dirndl -and- lederhosen charade. But everything De Mille choreographs is worth the most careful attention, and “Inconsequentials” does offer more opportunities to admire Rudisill, and to become acquainted with such Oakland paragons as Elizabeth Ashton and Joral Schmalle. Taped music accompanied all three ballets--with the unsteady (and uncredited) singing in “Inconsequentials” and the plodding tempos in “Jardin aux Lilas” working against the best interests of the company.