A Deep ‘Mediterranea’

As Europe grew increasingly marginalized politically and culturally in the second half of this century, a dance subgenre developed lamenting the continent’s lost primacy through brooding explorations of heritage. Following the lead of Maurice Bejart, Roland Petit and Nacho Duato, Italian choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti has chosen the Mediterranean Sea as a symbol of this heritage and created a long one-act meditation on the varied peoples living on its shores (including ancient cultures), portraying the Mediterranean sensibility as a binding force across time, distance, religion and language.

Danced by the accomplished and alluring Balletto di Toscana of Florence at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, Bigonzetti’s “Mediterranea” adopts a restless, balletic movement style ornamented and sometimes all but overwhelmed by gesture--as floridly ornate a style as one might expect in Florentine art but kept from disintegrating into mannerism by the use of the bare torso as a prime sculptural motif.

Plotless but structured as a cyclical journey, the ballet follows slender Eugenio Buratti and massive Armando Santin into musical environments that range from authentic folk recordings through stylizations of folklore (Mozart’s “Alla Turca” piano sonata, for example) to church music and contemporary pieces with no programmatic associations. Sometimes Buratti and Santin seem mere observers of choreographic events evolving from the music--travelers in a foreign land--but they also become central participants or, like ancient traders, the bearer of new ideas (a.k.a. movement motifs) quickly adopted by the local populace.

Throughout, their relationship stays enigmatic--with athletic tests of dominance as frequent as intimate displays of affection and a spectacular leap by Buratti into Santin’s arms repeated until it becomes an emblem of their closeness. Examples of same-sex partnering also occur in group passages, never more memorably than in Santin’s duet with the superbly pliant Eugenio Scigliano at the beginning of the Palestrina “Kyrie” sequence.

Although the formal dancing begins and ends with more conventional female-male duets for Katiuscia Bozza and Corrado Giordani, Bigonzetti can’t resist the opportunity for an overtly political tirade against sexism: a nightclub-style showpiece to flamenco music that finds Santin hauling the picturesquely distraught Simonetta Giannasi across the stage by her leather belt and otherwise caricaturing the oppressive male so crudely that the whole of “Mediterranea” threatens to go down the drain.

If it doesn’t, either here or in an equally unfortunate attempt at gestural comedy later on, credit the skill, beauty and dedication of the 12-member ensemble but, most of all, the power of the idea animating the whole project. Many Americans think of cultural diversity/rainbow politics as an exclusive stateside challenge--or albatross--for the new millennium. But Bigonzetti reminds us how much Old World precedent conditions our feelings on the subject.

An abstraction that invites each viewer to reconsider his or her origins and place in human society, “Mediterranea” also represents a vision of dance theater with deeper values than merely displaying steps, styles, stars or stories. In evoking the cradle of civilization, it also reaffirms dance’s original function of making a living, physical experience out of group consciousness: linking us to something greater than our individual perceptions and backgrounds, perhaps something greater than the Mediterranean itself.

* Balletto di Toscana performs “Mediterranea” tonight at 8 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $10-$28. (714) 556-ARTS.