DANCE REVIEW : Soviet Singers, Dancers Sail Into a Warm Reception

Fifty Soviet sailors will be singing and dancing around town this week. But this group won’t be doing it just for fun. They’re participating in a series of tightly orchestrated outdoor public performances in San Diego and Coronado.

The 50-member Soviet Song and Dance Ensemble of the Pacific Fleet, and the Soviet band that accompanies it, sailed into San Diego Tuesday morning, just one component in a historic visit by three Soviet navy vessels to this once-forbidden territory.

They performed Tuesday night at a private party sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce at the U.S. Grant Hotel. And they moved yesterday to Sea World for a noon show.

Before the Soviet ships leave Saturday morning, this vivacious troupe will appear for one-hour performances at noon today and tomorrow at the Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park. They will also present two-hour shows at 6:30 this evening at San Diego State University’s Open Air Theatre and at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow evening at Tidelands Park in Coronado.

What is a musical troupe doing in the company of Soviet military on this landmark visit to San Diego?

“Music and art are very good for helping us understand each other,” said Col. Nicholay Bessubchenco, a Soviet public relations officer, said.

“Such contacts bring about peace and harmony.”

Various cultural presentations are typical during official military visits by any nation, Cmdr. Cheryl Duft, the U.S. Navy’s local liaison for the Soviet ensemble, said.

“That’s the nature of these official visits. When U.S. ships go to high-visibility foreign ports, we have bands along doing the same thing. But the Soviets traditionally take song-and-dance troupes as well, to give people a chance to learn something about their culture,” she said

“An exchange of ships is a very big deal,” Anatoley Kalekin, leader of the Soviet troupe, said through an interpreter. “This is one way to embellish that.”

“We have a good cross-section of ethnic forms, but the company’s primary charter was to provide entertainment for the troops,” Kalekin said.

On those terms--as pure, hands-across-the-sea entertainment--the song-and-dance troupe succeeds. And, as Adm. Gennadly Alcksandrovich Khvatov, commander of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, said laughingly in a pre-show interview, the performers show American audiences another side of the Soviets: “We can recreate and rest too.”

Tuesday’s preview performance at the U.S. Grant was part of a reception for local and visiting dignitaries, and the performance was somewhat limited by a stage too shallow and cramped to provide a proper showcase for such a large ensemble.

Time constraints prevented the group from presenting its full program. Even so, the performance was reminiscent of another military-based song-and-dance ensemble--the Red Army Chorus, which brought San Diego audiences out in droves last year.

The Red Army Chorus, which is 200 hundred strong, dished out Russian-style razzle-dazzle and bits of Americana in a glitzy, show-biz package. For them, Ethnic authenticity was less important than flaunting bravura style and fostering international harmony.

The naval equivalent of the Red Army group proved to be similar in spirit, though a lot more modest in scale. Tuesday’s concert, which lasted 75 minutes, ran the gamut from traditional Soviet ethnic songs and dances, to patriotic military displays and standard American tunes. The latter clearly had been added to the troupe’s repertory as a token of friendship.

In full-length performances tonight and tomorrow, the Soviets intend to emphasize full-bodied dancing and cultural diversity, of which Tuesday night’s show gave just a sampling.

The show displayed that Soviets are interested in U.S. culture.

The singers performed the troupe’s own version of “Home on the Range,” “Hello Dolly” and “The Man I Love.” And, like the Red Army, this troupe also had the crowd in rapture with a rousing chorus of “God Bless America,” before bounding into a busy finale that packed the stage with costumed performers.

The most successful piece on Tuesday’s program was a contemporary, comic dance routine satirizing military life. Both the Soviets and their American hosts were quick to see the humor of brow-beaten sailors swabbing the decks and doing other necessary but unrewarding housekeeping chores.

A phalanx of male dancers stopped the show in its tracks when they came on--in perfect unison--imitating a set of gears in a well-oiled machine. Only this machine kept bogging down, just when the frustrated mechanic thought he had solved the problem to get it running in high gear.

Of the few pure ethnic dances on the program, the flashy show of martial arts and sword play done by men wielding wicked-looking lances and sabers was the most thrilling and kinetically satisfying.

Despite the cramped space, a band of agile men flung themselves into mock-combat, then followed with a series squatting kicks, tumbles, spread-eagle jumps and other traditional Cossack-style maneuvers to wild applause.

Six women are included in the dance ensemble. They never got a chance to shine on Tuesday’s program, although they kept popping up in different costumes, from ancient ethnic wear to chic sailor suits. The singers and musicians, some playing ancient instruments, fared better. They were given several opportunities to shine, and they had the audience clapping along merrily to their lusty seaman songs more than once.

Judging from the rafter-raising reception the Soviets got from this audience of about 600, San Diegans are right in tune with the Soviet military’s brand of entertainment. And the enthusiastic Soviet song-and-dance troupe was obviously just as happy to be performing their first concert here.

At the close of the concert, the singers intoned warmly to their audience: “Dear Friends, let us be just good friends.”