OC LIVE : Back to Where the Action Is : Ballet Pacifica Gives History a Jolt in the Lively ‘The Swallow Saves the Mission’

If someone was to describe a family entertainment as action-packed and full of intrigue, a special effects-soaked theme park show or a high-tech roller coaster might come to mind. When choreographer Dan Berney uses the description, he’s thinking children’s ballet.

On Saturday and Sunday, Ballet Pacifica opens its 1995-96 children’s series with Berney’s newest children’s work, “The Swallow Saves the Mission,” a 25-minute, “bordering on fictional” tale of a Native American, a conquistador and a swallow who band together to save the local animal population from a marauding mountain lion.

Set to works by Ferde Grofe and Aaron Copland, a compilation that Berney describes as “huge, dramatic, exciting and a little bit Western-sounding,” “The Swallow Saves the Mission” will be presented in concert with a new version of the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel,” choreographed by Ballet Pacifica artistic director Molly Lynch and set to music by Engelbert Humperdinck (the 19th-Century German composer, not the pop singer).

The program, recommended for audiences age 4 and up, will be presented three times daily at Laguna’s Festival Forum Theatre.

Ballet Pacifica’s children’s series, launched in 1978, continues this season with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Carnival of the Animals” (Feb. 3 and 4), “Safari” and “Alice in Wonderland” (March 23 and 24) and “Flitters and Creepers” and “Little Red Riding Hood” (April 20 and 21).

In a phone interview from his Hermosa Beach home, Berney, who created Ballet Pacifica’s 1994-95 children’s production “The Hilarious Tales of Peter Rabbit” and spent much of his early dance career training under Ballet Pacifica founder Lila Zali, talked about the “nonstop action” in his newest family work.

“The dancers get exhausted because it’s almost an aerobic dance for a half-hour,” he said. “But the energy level is so high that the children in the audience can really enjoy it and react to it.”

Integrating elements of classical ballet and modern dance, choreography for “The Swallow Saves the Mission” features “a lot of exciting lifts and leaps and turns” that Berney expects will be as thrilling to adults as to children.

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The six professional adults in the cast are accomplished actors as well, he says, and the extensive mime and nonverbal storytelling should keep even preschool-age children clued in to the tale.

To make sure he has their attention, Berney has also choreographed a number of chase scenes in which characters spill out into the audience.

Berney said he knows he may get some flak from purists about the liberties this work takes with early California history (i.e. conquistadors and Native Americans were generally not seen palling around the missions). And we won’t even mention what he’s doing to the food chain (through the main characters’ ministries, the mountain lion sees the error of his ways and decides to give up eating little fuzzy creatures).

But even though he plans to tour the piece to local schools later this year, Berney said he never intended to create a dancing documentary.

“I chose the mission setting because I wanted to do a piece that would have some relation to our [Southern California] environment,” Berney explained. “But obviously, I am picking and choosing characters from different points of history. The story definitely borders on the fictional.”

With its highly physical choreography and its animal characters, “The Swallow Saves the Mission” should be especially appealing to an audience Berney feels is mostly overlooked in children’s ballet.

“It’s usually the little guys who are left out when things like this are put together,” Berney said.

“Younger boys definitely need more attention given to them in terms of dance, and I think the chase scenes and the confrontations should appeal to them. The action is really going to do the talking.”

* CHILDREN’S LISTINGS, Page F21

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What: Ballet Pacifica presents “The Swallow Saves the Mission” and “Hansel and Gretel.”

* When: Saturday and Sunday at 11:30 a.m., 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.

* Where: Festival Forum Theatre, 650 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach.

* Whereabouts: From the San Diego (405) Freeway, exit at Laguna Canyon Road and drive west. The theater is on the Festival of the Arts grounds.

* Wherewithal: $10; $7 for children under 12.

* Where to call: (714) 851-9930.