Joffrey Makes the Most of Very Little

Red hair flying, Lorena Feijoo hurls herself into the air toward Steve Beirens, is grabbed and swung around his body, then down to the floor where she manages to look at once deeply stricken, dangerously angry and supremely classical. Performing Ann Marie DeAngelo’s formula gymnastic sex-war adagio to Bette Midler’s recording of “Stay With Me,” Feijoo maintains perfect clarity and aristocratic refinement even when rocketing through the tawdriest stunts, actually making you grateful to be watching choreographic bull.

Feijoo’s genius for making trash treasurable is desperately needed at the Ahmanson Theatre this week, for the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago has launched a five-performance engagement with a Thursday opening program of no creative importance whatsoever. But the tackiest old ballets--and the tackiest cliches in the newest one--release something in the best Joffrey dancers that they’ve stored up for a rainy day (or season) and now let loose unstintingly. It’s up to them, and they know it: bricks-without-straw time, with no aid from the “40 years of dance vision” that artistic director Gerald Arpino invokes in his welcoming speech. Not even an orchestra to help them in pieces that had live accompaniment in previous Music Center seasons.

No matter. These dancers know every strategy for taking the focus off of the what and putting it on the who. Call it a glorious do-it-yourself project: Calvin Kitten getting as close to the audience as possible in Arpino’s “Light Rain” (1981) and making every move into a major event--including his spectacular multiple turns. Guoping Wang peeling off one gorgeous turning-jump after another in the “Torch Bearer” solo from Arpino’s “Olympics” (1966). Best of all, Feijoo and Maia Wilkins giving Arpino’s “Kettentanz” (1971) an emotional engine powerful enough that you see only them, not their hectic, arbitrary movement tasks.

Roughly partnered by David Paul Kierce, Feijoo dances the “Kettenbrucke Waltz” duet in “Kettentanz” with great feathery delicacy, as unpredictably supple and vibrant when being lifted as when set free to dance on her own. Wilkins brings imposing amplitude to the same work’s “Schnofler Tanz” solo, whether skimming the stage backward, arms trailing above her head, or reclining exquisitely on the floor.

Both paragons also have their innings during the program’s nominal novelty, “Legends II,” a newly revised and expanded version of a 1996 suite in which seven female choreographers work with recordings by six pop divas: Midler, Edith Piaf, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. Think of it as “Bride of ‘Billboards,’ ” the latest Joffrey jukebox charade--billed as “A Gerald Arpino Production, Conceived and Directed by Gerald Arpino,” though Mr. A. choreographed none of it. Indeed, four of its seven sections were created for other dance companies between 1983 and 1990.

The only real class act is Laura Dean’s elegant ensemble to Streisand’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” in which sweet meetings and partings of young lovers enhance through contrast the death-of-love described in the lyrics. But, once again, the dancers triumph in nearly every challenge--though only the superb Beirens in the Midler duet with Feijoo can handle partnering chores reliably.

Wilkins swings on a trapeze with consummate majesty throughout Joanna Haigood’s glossy Piaf solo, “Dance for Yal.” Jill Davidson perfectly embodies the slinky, archetypal Fosse Woman leading the pack in Ann Reinking’s hard-sell “Sentimental Journey.” Beatriz Rodriguez sports flawless comic timing in Ilka Doubek’s antic striptease to “It Don’t Mean a Thing.” Julie Janus suffers glamorously through Sherry Zunker Dow’s “Man That Got Away.” And even the stupendously inconsequential Horne mini-suite by Margo Sappington brings out the best in an ensemble of virtuosi.

Designer Herbert Migdoll’s giant projections of the vocalists set the audience yelping before anyone dances a step, with canned applause between sections pumping up (and usually outlasting) the real applause out front. However, the Joffrey Ballet dancers never merely cash in on all this trumped-up or presold hoopla. Starting virtually from scratch, they make you see them as a great American company, more skillful and passionate than the rather staid guest artists (a.k.a. “seasonal dancers”) Valerie Madonia and Daniel Baudendistel, who join them for the extreme contortions of “Light Rain.” If they look like this in shameless junk, think what they could achieve in choreography.

* The Joffrey Ballet repeats this program tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2 p.m. A different program will be danced today at 2 p.m.: “Untitled” (Pilobolus), “Round of Angels” (Arpino), “Inner Space” (Sander) and “Billboards,” Section 1 (Dean). Ahmanson Theatre, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave. $20-$55. (213) 972-7211.