DANCE REVIEW : Avaz Troupe Serves Up a Marathon Variety Show

In nearly four hours at the Wilshire Ebell on Sunday, Avaz International Dance Theatre tried to be something of a one-stop emporium for folklore.

“In Celebration of the Silk Route” may once have been the organizing premise for this 18-part program (including nine premieres), but in the end all routes led to Iran: seven pieces plus others from traditions related to Iranian culture. In addition, founder-director Anthony Shay expressed his response to the L.A. riots by dumping in music and dance created in urban squalor--the Argentine tango and Greek rembetika, for example.

Even at its excruciating length, the program mandated heavy cuts in order to end before dawn. Thus the vibrant Emily Mayne danced only a snippet of the South Indian classical idiom Bharata Natyam, while tango specialists Loreen Arbus and Alberto Toledano (guests with the Avaz company) were reduced to two brief, supremely glamorous showpieces separated by a costume change.

The longest, most ambitious of the new works minimized dance and emphasized what Shay called “Persian rap” in its depiction of games of gossip within traditional Iranian women’s quarters. Another fine, new Shay staging re-created the stately Kurdish dances of Eastern Iran, with the men and women stepping through slow turns holding scarves in each hand.

Drapery of other sorts decorated an uneventful flamenco solo by Zeina Zarriega and dominated perhaps the evening’s most bizarre novelty: a Chinese ribbon dance performed by Tani in “M. Butterfly”-style Peking Opera drag, with a grandiose Buddhist ascension scene at the end. You want diversity? Seek no further.

Carolyn Krueger choreographed three of the new works: the two flowing yet intricately ornamented women’s dances from Uzbekistan and the celebratory Persian Gulf finale. Throughout the evening she danced with an energized calm and unerring mastery of complex shifts in pose and direction. Besides offering opportunities to hear the excellent Avaz musicians, the program provided selections by accomplished guests. These included the Golden Tango Trio, the Yu Lok Music Assn., flamenco guitarist-vocalist Pietro Barone and a four-member South Indian group. No stranger to Avaz performances, Siyamak Puyan again provided a spectacular display of classical Persian drumming.