DANCE REVIEW : A New but All Too Familiar ‘Coppelia’

Redecorating a fake antique must be a very unsatisfying job for a genuine artist. That’s the impression you get from visiting the Orange County Performing Arts Center, where a number of highly talented people are engaged in trying to squeeze a few more years of life from the feeble, familiar American Ballet Theatre staging of “Coppelia.”

Ballet Theatre has been dancing this same Enrique Martinez version since 1968--and it was always a stopgap, a jokey trivialization that came alive only through inspired partnerships. (Erik Bruhn and Carla Fracci danced the premiere.) Some day, you hoped, the company would discard this empty-headed embarrassment and reinvestigate the 1870 original, a comic masterwork choreographed by Arthur Saint-Leon and based on the same richly ambiguous E.T.A. Hoffmann tale depicted in the first act of Offenbach’s opera “Les Contes d’Hoffmann.”

A new Ballet Theatre “Coppelia” would have to restore cuts in the fabled score by Leo Delibes, develop a coherent sense of 19th-Century Parisian classical style, infuse the storytelling with conviction, allow the toy maker Coppelius some minimal dignity (if not mystery) and take seriously the work’s most potent themes. These include the artist’s obsessive love for his creation and that primal 19th-Century fixation on the contrast between the unattainable, “ideal” woman (here a mechanical doll) and the prosaic females of the real world.

Well, forget it. What’s billed as a new production of “Coppelia” simply replaces the sets and costumes, nothing more. For the exterior scenes, Tony Straiges has designed a bright, Baltic fantasy land--gingerbread houses stenciled with folk motifs--and he gives Coppelius’ studio enough distortions of scale to be properly disorienting. Patricia Zipprodt’s costumes prove generally attractive, though major lapses need to be corrected: a badly sagging wedding tutu for Swanilda, for example, and a deep-green dress that gives the insignificant character of the Mother undue prominence on a stage full of dancers wearing pastels.

Otherwise, this “Coppelia” remains pretty much the confused patchwork you remember--right down to the finale in which two guest ballerinas wearing glitzy shifts suddenly appear for showpiece solos that should belong to a grand-scale allegorical village pageant.

If the out-of-context dances by Aurora and Prayer make no sense, the pantomime by subsidiary characters on Friday (Kevin O’Day as the Burgomaster, Scott Schlexer as the Priest) often proved utterly incomprehensible. Even Victor Barbee as Coppelius seemed stuck with bits of business that had no meaning for him and didn’t link up in any coherent manner. (Barbee’s stoop and character walk also changed radically from passage to passage.)

With conductor Jack Everly enforcing a brisk but mechanical pace, most of the Friday cast appeared more intent on getting through this “Coppelia” than displaying any unique interpretive insights. Leslie Browne danced Aurora efficiently, Julie Kent broke the phrases of Prayer into choppy fragments, Kathleen Moore joined Keith Roberts for an unusually buoyant Mazurka and Elizabeth Dunn danced capably at the head of the spirited Czardas ensemble.

As Swanilda, Cynthia Harvey danced the doll solos of Act II with ideal fleetness, delicacy and technical flair. However, some of the slapstick with Barbee looked badly timed and nearly all of Act I appeared forced: the character’s spunk, her playful rapport with Franz, even the technique sometimes. Indeed, the balances Harvey needed for the wedding adagio in Act III never came easy and occasionly looked chancy.

Wes Chapman partnered Harvey conscientiously and gave his performance as Franz a devil-may-care zest that translated technically into bravura of the highest velocity. This Franz never stayed in one place long enough to think anything through, notice the stupid choices he was making or guess at their consequences. Maybe that’s the only way to perform any role in the American Ballet Theatre “Coppelia.”