DANCE REVIEW : Long Beach Introduces ‘ Unicorn’

Choreographer Terri Lewis’ “The Unicorn” is dripping with good intentions, but that doesn’t make it any less simplistic.

Billed as a “Pop-Opera-Ballet,” the work received its first performances by the Long Beach Ballet over the weekend at the Center Theater. Through double-cast characters (each principal was sung by one person, danced by another), the morality-play plot traces the changes wrought on people’s lives when a unicorn surfaces in downtown Manhattan.

The problem is, the characters are cartoon figures, the point of view is fuzzy and all the class-room exercise dancing is appended to the action, never deepening it or revealing anything about the people.

On Sunday, the lanky Edward Cueto managed to look not too ridiculous cantering through his unicorn duties. A petite Maricar Drilon danced the troubled teen-ager Ursula strongly; Phyllis Schneider and Russell Capps were her estranged parents.

The crooning soloists were Patricia Ben Peterson (unicorn), Justine Campbell-Elliott (Ursula), Vanessa Campbell (her mother) and Barry Bruder (her father).

Larry Meyers wrote the would-be uplifting libretto and the treacly pop score, sung also by the Cal State University Long Beach Vocal Jazz Ensemble.

The program opened with David Allan’s sometimes lyric, sometimes brainlessly jokey “On Occasion” (set to ersatz-Baroque music by St. Preux), danced with varying degrees of strength by Mandy Bawden, Orna Harari, Tzer-Shing Wang, Capps, Michael French and Alexander Greschenko.

Helen Coope’s modest Peruvian folk ballet “Aymara” completed the program.