DANCE REVIEW : Folclorico at Irvine Barclay

In dramatic contrast to Saturday afternoon’s gray, wet weather, the Ballet Folclorico Nacional de Mexico whirled onto the stage of Cheng Hall at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, offering a colorful, sunny, costume-crammed matinee.

Unrelated to the Folklorico troupe that recently toured the Southland, this Ballet Folclorico performs under the auspices of the Mexican government and presents dances and music from a number of Mexican states and cities.

Performing to a combination of live and recorded music, the show offered by the 50-member touring company is dominated by group spectacles. While these have their visual pleasures, the dancing can seem secondary to an array of elaborate headpieces, fans and outfits whose brightness is intensified by the gleam of metalicized fabrics.

There were, however, a few simpler interludes where individual performers were allowed to excel. In one of these, “Las Pascolas y el Venado,” the young dancer Jose Manuel Resendiz Tapia superbly embodies a deer that is stalked and killed by two bow-armed hunters.

Small and sinewy, Tapia peers out from beneath his stuffed deer headpiece with a darting, animal-like furtiveness. The rattles held in his hands and strapped to his ankles seem to symbolize the creature’s jangling pulse. Occasionally he pauses, fearfully observing the rhythmic heaving of his own diaphragm as if his panicked body had itself become something terrifying and strange.

There is a dramatic structure and darkness to “Las Pascolas y de Venado” that too often eludes the company’s director and sole choreographer, Silvia Lozano. Her dances tend to lack dynamic subtlety and are characterized by an incessant cheeriness.

Some of the problem may be that while Ballet Folclorico has many capable dancers, they rarely emerge as distinct personalities. Just what we were missing became clear when more knowing performers took the stage. These included the Jarocho musicians, particularly vocalist and guitarist Joaquin Pavon Rodriguez, and the delightful lariat virtuoso Lorenzo Agustin Escamilla.