DANCE REVIEW : A Dazzling Debut : Ballet: Maximillian Guerra is sensational as guest artist at San Diego performance of the Kirov.

Appearing as a guest with the Kirov Ballet, Maximillian Guerra made a sensational debut as Solor in “La Bayadere” at the Civic Theatre on Saturday.

In one of those familiar switches from previously announced casting, Guerra danced a day earlier than scheduled. This and other changes came about because Igor Zelensky had to pull out temporarily from the tour. He is recuperating in Washington from mild exhaustion, on the advice of doctors, according to a spokesman for the group that brought the company to San Diego.

Though perhaps lacking the utmost degree of Kirov refinement, Guerra made the Marius Petipa classic as vital, credible and compelling as the Royal Danes did with even older August Bournonville repertory last month in Orange County.

Maybe it requires an outsider these days to revitalize this tradition, to come at it with belief and naivete, instead of seeing it as a dutiful ritual and routine.

After all, created in 1877, “La Bayadere” is probably the oldest ballet to have remained continuously in the Kirov repertory.

Certainly there have been changes in the florid tale of an Indian temple dancer, or Bayadere, done in by a jealous rival and betrayed by her not-so-heroic warrior lover.

The entire last act has not been danced for at least 50 years. The ballet ends now with the opium dream of the Kingdom of the Shades, not with a temple crashing down on all the miscreants.

Yet when the Kirov introduced even just this austere, classical dream sequence to Americans in 1961, we were overwhelmed.

The refined idealism proved a revelation.

It remained for a Kirov defector, Natalia Makarova, to offer the company its first full-length version, when she created a production for American Ballet Theatre in 1980. The Shades scene now arose out of a more technical context. Or to be more apt, from a silent-film, melodrama context.

That production, incidentally, attempted to restore the final act, but with unsatisfactory results.

This tour brings the real, opulent thing. Well, sort of.

The large and lovely sets, by four different designers, are modeled upon the originals. The costumes, by Evgeny Ponomaryov, show more midriff than would have been likely. A flashy, Vegas-style tribal dance has to be a later interpolation.

Even so, you would think that the Kirov would have a lock on understanding and transmitting the values of the work.

But many of the dancers have allowed themselves to generalize and abstract the drama and offer rote performances as if the work has no real meaning for them other than for display or getting through the steps. Perhaps, to be charitable, many are tired after a long and grueling national tour.

Not surprisingly, the indefatigable Guerra, a guest from the Berlin Ballet, looked almost like an impassioned interloper in such company. Short in stature, he made up for lack of princely proportions with ardent wooing, innocent commitment and otherwise consistently detailed characterization.

He was no slouch as a virtuoso dancer, either, investing his moves with springy, tense energy, bounding with high elevation and ending a series of barrel turns with a double spin that sent the audience into an uproar.

In comparison, his Nikiya, Zhanna Ayupova, seemed reserved, contained, if not remote, especially in the early love scenes. Though fluid in her arms and capable of long, poised balances, she became vulnerable only in her pained wedding solo.

As Gamzatti, Irina Chistiakova made a cold, formidable and fearful adversary. Technically, she proved fleet and fluent in the show-off duties in the wedding pas de deux, although she and Guerra indulged in some long-delayed musical cadences.

Evgeny Neff was a serviceable fakir. Vladimir Ponomaryov (not the designer) was the stalwart, suffering High Brahmin.

Yuri Fateyev danced the Bronze Idol with heavy but cautious heft, slipping a bit after each turn landing to the knee.

Despite some shaky balances, the corps of 32 shades danced with arresting unanimity and refinement, helped partly perhaps by the somewhat fast pace taken by conductor Victor Fedotov. Larissa Lezhnina, Irina Sitnikova and Veronika Ivanova were the three well-matched soloists.