DANCE / CHRIS PASLES : S.F. Critics Say ‘No-No’ to UCI Professor’s ‘Ya-Ya’ : Work premiered by the San Francisco Ballet is called a disaster, but one writer says the audience found it a ‘breath of fresh air.’

San Francisco Bay Area dance critics ranged from condemnation to cautious endorsement in assessing UC Irvine dance professor Donald McKayle’s “Gumbo Ya-Ya,” which received its premiere last week by the San Francisco Ballet.

“ ‘Gumbo Ya-Ya’ is, simply, a disaster, the company’s biggest mistake since artistic director Helgi Tomasson’s Joan of Arc ballet some years ago,” Allan Ulrich wrote in the San Francisco Examiner. The choreographer “has picked a safe and uncontroversial theme (does anyone want to see the tropical rain forest destroyed?) and he has exploited it with a limited dance vocabulary and minimal theatrical coherence.”

McKayle’s choreography “lacks the spontaneity, fantasy and freedom of the modern dance background with which he’s associated. And he seems unwilling to restore the purity and line of classical movement,” Ulrich continued. “One might have hoped for some visceral thrills from (Muriel) Maffre and (Eric) Hoisington (who danced the central pas de deux). But McKayle’s phrasing is short-winded. The pair tangle and the choreography pulls them apart, without allowing for dramatic tension.”

Ulrich also called the score by UCI professor James Newton a “mix of New Age banalities with moldy 1950s avant-garde posturings, though there are a few moments when it seems to fuse with the actions.”

In the San Jose Mercury News, Paul Hertelendy compared “Gumbo” to an earlier work by Paulo Denubila for the San Jose Cleveland Ballet, writing that the McKayle piece “traces the same environmental theme of Third-World wilderness devastation, only in a grossly over-designed, Star-Trek-costumed format.”

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Hertelendy referred to McKayle’s “jumbled messages” but gave the choreographer a pat on the back for “spotting hidden talent” by elevating Hoisington, a corps dancer, to the male lead. Hoisington, the critic wrote, “sparked the scene with an animal magnetism rarely found in this company.”

Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, David Gere took a different tack. He called “Gumbo” a “curiously rich work” that--despite “sensory overload”--”sent visible tremors through the audience.”

Why? “Never once, until now (under Icelandic Helgi Tomasson) has an African American been commissioned to make a work for it. No wonder McKayle’s work takes the Ballet audience by surprise,” he wrote.

“The combination of anthropology and theatricality, of African-based movement and ballet, and of social content with strong technique that defines the stream of work that includes (Pearl) Primus, (Katherine) Dunham and McKayle . . . has remained virtually unknown to the (San Francisco) Opera House audience. That audience seemed to view it as a breath of fresh air. Time will tell if a (regular) place can be found for it there.”