Dance, Performance Art : Moscow’s Glitzy ‘Fantasm’

Pity the poor Moscow Dance Theatre. Brought to the United States reportedly for a one-year tour, the group of 18 female gymnasts-dancers and their director was abandoned two months ago by their promoter after only seven performances in Torrance.

Left stranded, without money, without work, without much knowledge of English, the group was saved from disaster by the help of the local Russian and Armenian communities, which pitched in to supply food, housing, help the company rehearse and mount a new production.

One would like to say the story ends in triumph. Unfortunately, “Fantasm,” the new production, danced for the first time Saturday at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre, is a vulgar exercise in glitz and witlessness.

The piece vaguely concerns the battle between heavenly and sensual impulses in the soul of the dissolute Russian mystic, Rasputin, who sometimes is credited for bringing down the Romanov dynasty single-handedly. In this case, it was easy to tell heaven from hell. The heavenly figures wore white.

The work was written by company co-directors, Ilya Reznik, who took the role of Rasputin, and Olga Morozowa, head coach of the former Soviet Gymnastics Olympic Team (1986-1990), who also choreographed it.

Morozowa devised three basic movement motifs for the 70-minute (not 90-) work. The most startling was a woman lifting one leg sideways straight up to the ear. This signaled either an ecstatic emotional moment or a catch-all position whenever the choreographer had nothing else to offer, which was a frequent occurrence.

A second motif was a kind of football goal-post position, in which a dancer lay on her back to spread her legs in that shape. An astute observer realized instantly that this was an inversion of the spread-leg, deep squat seen earlier--and often--in the piece.

A third movement motif was the V-shaped, legs-in-the-air finish, with dancers again down on their backs. Of course, this is to consider all the fanny-waving, butt-stroking and flashing jumps in the air to be mere secondary diversions.

If all this implies that generally, the lithe and attractive dancers (ages 18 to 21), usually dressed in skin-tight costumes, had little else to do but lunge, stomp, crouch and bounce, that’s right. Well, sometimes they stalked about as monks. Sometimes they went through simulated sex routines. Sometimes they turned one-handed somersaults.

Perhaps a Russian speaker could find deeper meanings behind this in Reznik’s soliloquies, only some of which were translated. Or in the lyrics of the taped songs, mostly cabaret or rock music that was credited to eight different composers. But it wasn’t likely.

“Fantasm” will be repeated Aug. 7-15 at the Orpheum Theatre downtown and Aug. 21 and 22 at the East Theatre in San Diego.