Weekend Reviews : Dance : Triumphant Visions of Balanchine From Miami

Miami City Ballet is only 8 years old and it can’t match the stylistic sheen or casting-in-depth of San Francisco Ballet and other seasoned regional companies. But, whatever their individual talents, nearly all the dancers in the 37-member ensemble share a common attack: distinctively incisive, emotional and energetic.

Whether the ballet is a masterwork by the late George Balanchine or a novelty by the company’s resident choreographer, the young Peruvian Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros, Miami City Ballet approaches it as a series of highly specific effects timed and projected for maximum surprise.

Artistic director Edward Villella used to dance like this and, in two programs over the weekend at the Wiltern Theatre, he transformed an unforgettable personal style into an unbeatable company strategy.

In “Apollo,” “The Four Temperaments,” and “Rubies,” the best of Villella’s principals danced as if Balanchine choreographed especially for them--and as if each ballet had nothing in common with any other.

The hot virtuoso of the company, Franklin Gamero, found an edge of wildness in Apollo that definitely needed taming by his fleet, supple Terpsichore, Maribel Modrono. In the central duet of “The Four T’s,” Modrono joined Marin Boieru for a twisty, jazzy playoff only slightly less memorable than their electric pairing in “Rubies.”

Sally Ann Isaacks danced the secondary (showgirl) role in “Rubies” with flamboyant star power, then banked her fires for a commanding performance of the “Temperament” finale. And, in the same ballet, rubber-legged Christopher Roman executed the rigors of the Phlegmatic solo brilliantly as a kind of eccentric improvisation.

If Miami modernism triumphed on Friday and Saturday, the company’s classicism proved less distinguished. In Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux,” Gamero looked technically uneven opposite Maribel Modrono’s twin sister Mabel--charming in other roles, but hectic and forced here. Spotty corps unisons and the tense lead performances of Marjorie Hardwick and Douglas Gawriljuk also weakened Gamonet de los Heros’ “Divertimento Espanol.”

This adaptation of Marius Petipa’s “Paquita” leaves some of the original choreography intact, but introduces changes of speed and corps geometry, along with revising many of the women’s solos--sometimes to different music.

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By depicting an Andes wedding in the style of an Imperial Russian divertissement, Gamonet de los Heros’ “Danzalta” also represented a tribute to the 19th Century--though, toward the end, a Bejart influence suddenly emerged in a sequence juxtaposing the near-naked Gawriljuk with eight figures in imposing ceremonial costumes. The grand-scale spectacle of the engagement, “Danzalta” featured tiers of life-sized cloth figures designed by Carlos Arditti and a splashy commissioned score by Gordon Lowry Harrell.

However, Gamonet de los Heros’ biggest success here turned out to be the duet “Nous Sommes,” an essay in slush-pump gymnastic rapture that Gamero and Mabel Modrono executed with devastating dignity and control.

Strongly led by Hardwick and Gawriljuk, his unfinished “D Symphonies” proved more original, using computer technology to bypass normal movement logic and create unexpected, “inhuman” virtuosity. With the dancers trying to look like figures in a video game, the ballet featured an abundance of clipped, deliberately arbitrary limb-effects: legs and arms abruptly shooting out, then snapping to a new position--to canned Baroque music, no less.

Unfortunately, overamplified audiotapes accompanied all the works on view, generating an inhuman technological overload even when resolutely old-fashioned balletic values held the stage.