DANCE REVIEW : American Folk Ballet Re-Creates Leningrad Show in Fullerton : Performance lends nostalgic sense of order and good will to the Plummer.

Burch Mann founded the American Folk Ballet in Pasadena in 1962 at the height of the folk-music craze. Left in the dust by the cultural upheavals of the last few decades, her company has resettled in Cedar City, Utah, where, lo and behold, history has caught up with its 83-year-old Texan founder.

At Fullerton’s Plummer Auditorium on Sunday evening, the ensemble of 16 dancers and two vocal soloists re-created a program that wowed Leningrad during their two-week Soviet tour last summer.

Composed largely of the same material the group has been showing for the last two decades, choreography that is derivative, rudimentary, rhythmic and repetitive, the show is nevertheless tight, well-performed and entertaining, as befits an enterprise crafted by the woman who created all the production numbers for the Mickey Mouse Club during its first year.

Narrator Rick Lantz reads the rhyming program notes in the unctuous style of a television audience warm-up comic, his suit and tie a curious contrast to the homespun trousers and ruffled skirts of this period enterprise.

The American Folk Ballet uses foolproof manipulative devices, borrowing from such masterpieces as “Our Town,” from such choreographers as Agnes de Mille, Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey, from the sure-fire music of gospel singers and church hymnals.

No one is credited with the movie-score stings that drive the action, but unaccompanied singers Clarence Treat and Jacqueline Taylor-Sutton are a welcome respite from the mostly recorded accompaniments.

The clean-cut dancers Mann calls “boys and girls” (though some have been with her for 15 years) are strong and capable and would look right at home in a summer-stock musical comedy.

Wedding ballet technique to poster-shop images of the American West, fusing Irish step-dancing with the cancan, they create a nostalgic sense of order and good will.

American Folk Ballet repeats its performance Friday and Saturday evenings at the Norris Theatre in Rolling Hills Estates, and next Tuesday at Pepperdine University in Malibu.