Smuin Searches for Ways to Live Up to High Concept

Fresh from creating new moves for Jabba the Hut in the special edition of “Return of the Jedi,” Michael Smuin brought his 3-year-old Smuin Ballets/SF to Cal State L.A. on Saturday.

Unfortunately, the mountainous Jabba wasn’t in the 13-member Bay Area ensemble--and Smuin really needed him to execute the super-punishing gymnastic lifts he piled up relentlessly in all four pieces. Mere ballet-trained humans looked clumsy and effortful at this nonstop hoisting and heaving.

Now 58, Smuin is a resourceful media man, strong conceptually but weak when it comes to choreographic development. Half the pieces danced at the Luckman Theatre dated from his directorship of San Francisco Ballet (1973-1985), half were new. Each one strained for novelty but at best revealed a questing, restless intelligence.

In “Romanze,” for instance, the combination of his nude-look pas de deux, a Victorian-style film by Francis Ford Coppola and music by Dvorak never really fused as either emotional statement or movement design, but it produced a number of haunting effects (waves washing over the dancers) and reminded everyone how few choreographers even attempt to use available technology.

The deliberately lurid “Frankie and Johnny” updated the classic folk ballad with high-energy mambo records, a clever tango duet for man and mannequin--plus plenty of time devoted to detailing the abuse of a young woman, long a specialty of Smuin ballets.

The quasi-classical company showpiece “One Step Forward to Bach” and the pseudo-Japanese opening duet from “Shinju” contained the most contorted partnering experiments on the program--the former looking obnoxiously unmusical, the latter crude and pretentious.

However, Smuin’s dancers earned their ovations with skill, stamina and versatility. The equally hard-working Gregory Amato and Lee Bell joined the long line of shirtless hunks marking Smuin’s classical career, but the sharpest male dancing came from Noe Serrano. Among the women, pride of place belonged to the stylish and expressive Celia Fushille-Burke. Taped music accompanied all the pieces.