DANCE REVIEW : Moiseyev Loses Some of Its Kick

Nearly 60 years ago, the Soviet government asked Bolshoi Ballet choreographer Igor Moiseyev to organize the first festival of national dance--to place center stage the rich cultural traditions that had been marginalized in European concert dance up to that time.

A sample of what he created for that groundbreaking event formed the exultant finale to a typically triumphant performance Tuesday by the Moiseyev Dance Company at the Pantages Theatre, part of the company’s ninth American tour and a celebration of Moiseyev’s upcoming 90th birthday.

Like most pioneers, Moiseyev invaded new territory without maps or guides. Back in 1936, would it have mattered if an ethnologist had warned him about the fundamental difference between adapting traditional folk dances (the Ukrainian Hopak, for instance) and creating brand-new showpiece choreography loosely based on what a certain group of people might be doing at a certain time? Probably not; given his background and creative instincts, it probably wouldn’t have mattered.

The famous gliding entrance in Moiseyev’s 1955 “Partisans,” for example, has nothing to do with folk dance: It’s a brilliant choreographic abstraction of a wartime mountain convoy seen from a distance. And it would prove just as impressive in a Bolshoi story-ballet as on a Moiseyev folk-dance program.

As if nothing had changed since 1936, Moiseyev’s newest group piece mixes depictions of a specific community with actual folk steps--but lacks the blazing imagination and sense of dance metaphor that makes “Partisans” so thrilling. Created last year, “Jewish Suite” is so overloaded with fussy mime--incessant mugging, shrugging, kvetching and finger-wagging--that it makes people arriving for an engagement party resemble the grotesque procession of trolls in the second act of August Bournonville’s ballet “A Folk Tale.”

Is he celebrating Jewish traditions here or mocking them? Certainly Moiseyev’s “Finnish Polka” from 1993 makes fun of its subject by an exaggerated brightness and stiffness--turning its two dancers into facsimiles of cutesie-poo wind-up dolls.

At least “Finnish Polka” gives Deniss Berko and Angelina Cherepanova some clever choreography. When dancing finally breaks out in “Jewish Suite,” however, it’s so rhythmically feeble and enslaved to gesture that the twisty footwork never makes much of an effect, not even in the formula Moiseyev speedup at the end (to “Hava Negillah”).

So it goes, all evening long: choreography that ricochets from the sublime (the lyrical Moldavian Hora for 16 women) to the ridiculous (a nightclub-style Gypsy showpiece blamed on Bessarabians), performed by a positively awesome company of young virtuosos.

Indeed, the most dubious choreography usually inspires the finest performances: Larissa Kitchaeva’s state-of-the-art backbends in “Gypsies,” for example, or the fabulous high-velocity foot-slams by Igor Pivorovich, Alexander Koulygine and Rudi Khodjoian in an ostensibly Argentine “Gaucho” interlude more pompous than pampas in its effect.

The greatest disappointment: For the first time, the Moiseyev is touring America without a live orchestra, though a company representative says that tape accompaniments have been used on previous European tours.

* The Moiseyev Dance Company performs tonight and Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd. Tickets: $27-$49.50. (213) 480-3232. The company then appears Monday-Wednesday at 8 p.m. in the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $18-$49. (714) 740-2000.