DANCE REVIEW : The Gospel According to Kylian

In the wondrous, wicked and otherworldly world of dance, youth--or at least a simulation of youth--is supposed to be everything. The participants are often regarded, condescendingly, as girls and boys.

In the Nederlands Dans Theater 3, formed in 1991 by the choreographer Jiri Kylian, the stress is on maturity. The repertory is designed for veterans of terpsichorean wars, age 40 and beyond. The resident knees may not be what they used to be, but the dancers wear their battle scars with pride and dignity, maybe even with wisdom and wit. Forget those giddy children. This company deals with women and men.

The concept is admirable, even if its necessity is not. Ghettos always enforce dangerous isolation.

The Nederlands ensemble, which made its West Coast debut Friday under UCLA auspices at the Veterans Wadsworth Theater, employs five splendid dancers, two of whom used to be American icons. Martine van Hamel, now 48, was once a glorious swan queen at Ballet Theatre. She was last seen demoted to walk-on mime assignments that wasted her still-extraordinary talents. Gary Chryst, now 46, was once the most compelling danseur-actor on the Joffrey roster. He was last seen buried in the anonymous corps of “Guys and Dolls” on Broadway.

Artists like these deserve to be revered, stimulated, stretched in new directions, even when multiple pirouettes and dramatic leaps become irrelevant nuisances. At Wadsworth, achievements did not invariably match intentions.

In the first half of the program, which introduced intimate pieces by Christopher Bruce, Kylian and Ohad Naharin, the tailor-made repertory may have been trivial, but it was engaging. In the second half, which introduced pretentious pieces by Hans van Manen, Kylian and Paul Lightfoot, the tailor-made repertory may have been trivial, but it was annoying.

In “Moonshine,” Bruce offered eight faux-folksy settings of “Bootleg” songs by Bob Dylan. There wasn’t much profundity here (shouldn’t have been), and the dancing--mostly satirical yahoo snippets--traced a precarious line between caricature and tragedy. Still, the body language looked both apt and inventive in context. It was executed with suavity and deadpan relish by Jeanne Solan (47) as the blond ingenue, Sabine Kupferberg (either 44 or 50--depending on whether one believes company publicity or the New York Times) as the other woman, Gerard Lemaitre (59) as the shuffling paternal figure, and Chryst as the inevitable kid.

Chryst returned for Kylian’s “Double You,” a life- is- short- and- the- universe- is- a- stage solo set to the Allemande from Bach’s Partita No. 4 in D. Confronting a symbolic pair of pendulums, the protagonist underwent a cycle of abstract contortions with virtuosic pathos, neatly seconding the harpsichordist on the soundtrack. (All the music on the program was taped, and none of the musicians were deemed worthy of credit.)

The ambiguous title of this little exercise, not incidentally, invokes the letter W. The original annotation mustered such descriptive images as “wabble,” “wake,” “walk,” “wrist,” “write” and “wrong.” For reasons unknown, the programmatic clues were deleted in Westwood.

In “Off White,” choreographed by Ohad Naharin, the hard-working Chryst joined the fearless Kupferberg in a slam-bang love-hate duet, a battle of the sexes that happens to take place on a bed that suspiciously resembles a trampoline. It was all good, nasty, painful fun. The score, cleverly chosen, was a gushing waltz by Johann Strauss--filtered through the stark sensibilities of Arnold Schoenberg.

The mood turned tawdry after intermission. And the ploys turned gimmicky.

*

The willowy, long-limbed Van Hamel spent much of her ballet career searching for a suitable partner. Ironically, she continued her quest in Van Manen’s “Different Partners.” Torn, soap-opera style, between the lure of art--ah, the barre--and the lure of life--ah, the man--she indulged in stylized preening offset by stylized agonizing. She still has a great line, but it didn’t mean much here, and, given Chryst’s modest stature, the physical collaboration raised additional problems.

Van Hamel returned, exquisitely shadowed by Kupferberg, in Kylian’s self-conscious “No Sleep Till Dawn of Day,” a semi-minimalist indulgence set to a droning Solomon Islands lullaby. The women courted tedium brilliantly, flashing spectacular extensions and manipulating a prop row of 18 chairs with primitive gestures that telegraphed all-purpose angst.

The finale was Lightfoot’s lightweight “Susto,” a busy bagatelle in which four good-natured dancers take turns taking showers under a stream of fine gravel flowing from an urn in the sky. Footprints in the sands of time, and all that.

The silliness cloyed all too soon. At climax time, Beethoven’s heroic Fifth Symphony was actually reduced to background music for a crotch-clutching sight gag. Poor Ludwig.