A Mix of Art, Unpolished Potential Via St. Petersburg

When cultural detente brought the Kirov Ballet back to America in the mid-1980s--and when the company danced in the film “Backstage at the Kirov” during the same period--the leading ballerina was Galina Mezentseva, an alarmingly thin artist with a radically individual approach to repertory classics.

Now 44, Mezentseva looked unchanged Saturday in four showpieces at the Norris Theatre in Rolling Hills Estates. Her skeletal arms and bony back still tainted the lyricism of the Act 2 adagio from “Swan Lake” with grotesque Mannerist implications. However Mezentseva’s dramatic subtlety and physical pliancy seemed miraculous in an era increasingly dominated by unyielding, hyper-technical Tough Cookie ballerinas such as Paloma Herrera at American Ballet Theatre and Nadezhda Gracheva at the Bolshoi.

Mezentseva’s poetic use of those problematic arms and her sense of approaching death renewed Fokine’s over-familiar “Dying Swan,” and she managed to bring a dimension of inner radiance to two unworthy vehicles: a sinewy solo from Yuri Grigorovich’s “Legend of Love” and the central adagio in Peggy Willis-Aarnio’s inane ensemble piece “Remember When?”

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This endless Gershwin suite enlisted Mezentseva’s backup group, the St. Petersburg Ballet. Young and energetic, each member looked trained to do one thing really well (turns, perhaps, or partnering), but few proved secure away from that specialty.

Although the Norris program booklet contained too many ID gaffes to reliably credit anyone, preliminary research suggests that Andrei Ivanov, Natalia Bashkirtseva, Elizaveta Ananian and Valentina Sergueyeva all had impressive moments.

Unfortunately, the evening emphasized fare strongly performed by other touring groups--Petipa’s “Don Quixote” pas de deux, Vainonen’s “Nutcracker” grand pas, Saint-Leon’s “La Vivandiere” pas de six--leaving the wildly uneven Petersburgers up the Neva without a paddle.

* The St. Petersburg Ballet dances Saturday, 8 p.m., Smothers Theatre, Pepperdine University, 24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. $27. (310) 456-4522.