Dance Reviews : A Royal Rose, Friends in Orange County

With her slightly elfin beauty, her air of wide-eyed vulnerability and her ability to exalt a floating softness when she dances, Royal Danish Ballet principal Rose Gad seems born and bred for the great Romantic roles.

The company assigned her two in a row at the Performing Arts Center during the weekend: the title role in “La Sylphide” Friday evening and then Teresina in “Napoli” Saturday afternoon. She had never danced Teresina before in the complete ballet, and the portrayal, at best, proved just a sketch, at worst a collage of mannerisms.

However, you might have made the same judgment about her Sylph at the Bournonville Festival in Copenhagen less than two months ago--and that characterization has now developed into a radiant, detailed and highly individual achievement. Moody, bird-like, disarmingly devious, Gad’s Sylph expressed longing-for-the-impossible just as fervently as her equally doomed James.

At 22, Gad is in her first bloom as a ballerina and her freshness illuminated all her choreography, whether the delicate shifts in dynamics of her first solo as the Sylph or the alternately dainty and saucy pointe-work in the last-act divertissement from “Napoli.” She is a dancer of world-class potential and fast-growing mastery.

Gad danced with previously reviewed colleagues in “La Sylphide” and with a virtually new cast of “Napoli,” one dominated by the intense, charismatic Peter Bo Bendixen as Gennaro. Venturing his role for the first time, Bendixen created a distinctively tough, streetwise and sensual hero--one tamed and ennobled by adversity.

Unfortunately, much of this distinction vanished when Bendixen began to dance: Turning jumps frequently lost their intended shape during the Act III festivities, and he never came close to competing with Lloyd Riggins, the afternoon’s brilliant, unannounced leader of the tarantella.

However, it would be premature to dismiss any performer who can set off seismic tremors in a theater just by flashing his eyes. Bendixen may not yet be a distinguished Bournonville dancer, but he is most definitely a star.

Other “Napoli” cast changes Saturday afternoon found Kirsten Simone exuding grace and love as Teresina’s mother; Stephen Pier projecting great spiritual calm as Fra Ambrosio; Tommy Frishoei shaping a complex, gutsy portrait of the lying Peppo and Kim Nielsen a generalized impression of the bumbling Giacomo. Michael Bastian made the Street Singer a very seedy wretch, indeed.

Besides “La Sylphide,” the Friday program offered “Konservatoriet” and the “Flower Festival” pas de deux again, each with new leads.

Riggins provided exemplary Bournonville classicism in “Konservatoriet”--fleet, effortless, perfectly composed technique. But he lacked the sense of old-world grandeur that should gild the role. Scarcely a serious lapse compared to the consistently clenched and sometimes unsteady dancing of Heidi Ryom and Lis Jeppesen in the major female roles.

The Friday “Flower Festival” duet showcased the unfailing charm and precision of Christina Olsson along with the spectacular promise of boyish Victor Alvarez, the company’s high-flying, honorary Dane-from-Spain.