DANCE REVIEW : Avaz’s Mixed Program at Wilshire Ebell

Time has been on Avaz Dance Theatre’s side. Ever since Anthony Shay founded this locally based folk company in 1977, it has performed music and dance from such exotic places as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan: locales suddenly in the news. In addition, the company’s interest in choral music of the Balkans and Eastern Europe preceded the current worldwide popularity of these genres.

On Sunday at the Wilshire Ebell, Avaz reveled in its newfound trendiness, and the presence in the audience of former Lebanese hostage Father Lawrence Martin Jenco underscored the point.

In his spoken program notes, Shay celebrated his prescience and introduced samples of traditional culture from Saudi Arabia and Israel, Turkey and Armenia--plus plenty from Iran--as if to neutralize old animosities by honoring everyone equally.

This approach didn’t always work at the Ebell any more than it does at the United Nations, but you had to respect the attempt. Certainly Ixchel Dimetral-Maerker’s staging of an Uzbek women’s ensemble caught the deep refinement in this ancient culture that we don’t read about in the front-page statistics. Here the constant changes of group alignment and unusual rhythmic accents (including neck displacements, shoulder shakes and hand curling) never disturbed the sense of great stability established in the gliding, perfectly-in-balance footwork.

The Avaz women also made the lyrical Armenian and joyous Saudi dances into program highlights. The vigorous men’s “Calusari” dances from Romania looked sharper at a recent Avaz performance on the Dance Gallery “In the Works” series, but male prowess otherwise loomed large on Sunday--though never more impressively than in the galvanic, scarf-shaking Kurdistani line dances for men and women.

In Croatian and Bulgarian suites, the women’s chorus (called Zhena) took center stage, singing with impressive force and dignity. The Avaz musicians proved even more prominent, but apart from the vibrant dance accompaniments, much of their playing sounded correct but oddly sluggish.