Looking Forward to the Past

Ballet Preljocaj, which danced a vivid reinterpretation of “Romeo and Juliet” last month in Los Angeles, comes to Irvine this week with an equally radical “Hommage aux Ballets Russes” program at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

The title refers to Serge Diaghilev’s famous company, which launched a revolution in dance in Paris in the early decades of this century.

“Ballets Russes is the first important modern dance group of the century,” Angelin Preljocaj, 41, said in a recent phone interview from UCLA.

“Diaghilev wanted always to do new things. He was always looking forward. The best homage to the Ballets Russes is to do something new.”

The Preljocaj (pronounced prel-zho-cazh) “Hommage” includes Diaghilev’s versions of “Le Spectre de la Rose,” “Noces” and “Annonciation.”

Fokine’s original 1911 “Spectre,” still part of ballet’s standard repertory, tells the dream of a girl returning from a ball. It contained the most famous leap in ballet history--Nijinsky as the Spirit of the Rose leaping through a window as the girl woke at the end.

Preljocaj’s version uses the same music--Weber’s “Invitation to the Dance” (orchestrated by Berlioz)--but intercuts it with a score by Marc Khanne. The contemporary choreographer uses three couples dispersed on a stage split into two parts, what Preljocaj calls “dreaming space and real space.

“Two different actions are going on at the same time. You have a choice in what you prefer to look at, but the two [actions] are completely separate. It’s like there are two pieces. Finally, we don’t know which is the dream and which is the reality.”

Preljocaj’s “Spectre” was commissioned in 1993 by the Paris Opera, where Diaghilev’s company danced.

“I felt vibrations in the place,” Preljocaj said.

His also has a startling take on Nijinska’s 1923 “Les Noces,” which also survives although it is not the only danced version of Stravinksy’s music. The original presented Russian peasant wedding rituals as traumatic experiences for the bride and groom.

Born in Paris to Albanian parents, Preljocaj could relate. He described a traditional Albanian wedding as “so barbaric a ritual.”

“The family of the boy comes to the family of the girl and kidnaps her. She loses everything. She loses her family because she goes to a place where she knows nobody. She loses her childhood, and also her virginity. And these things come on the same day.

“In an Albanian wedding, all the women cry. Small girls cry because they don’t understand this mysterious thing that’s happening. Adolescents cry because they know it’s going to happen to them. And old women cry because they know exactly what happened. There’s something really tragic and barbaric about it.”

To reflect this, the choreographer changed the original title by dropping the article before the noun. “ ‘Les Noces’ is more literary,” he said. “ ‘Noces’ is more like a scream. ‘Noces’ is more close to my version.”

In it, dancers manhandle five life-sized puppets in wedding dresses. “The bride is completely manipulated and driven to her destiny,” the choreographer said. “She doesn’t know what is happening.”

His version was commissioned in 1989 by La Biennale de la Danse du Val-de-Marne. Preljocaj did not see Nijinska’s ballet until after he had completed his own.

“Had I seen her version first, I would have given up,” he said. “I was like a virgin.”

To complete a full evening devoted to the Ballets Russes, he turned to a work that Diaghilev and Massine had discussed but never made--a ballet based on the Annunciation, in which an angel of God announces to the Virgin Mary that she will give birth to Christ.

“Their letters explained that it was a very passionate theme to work on,” he said. “They didn’t pick Vivaldi, as I did, however.”

For inspiration, he looked at many paintings depicting the event.

“A lot of artists took the same theme,” he said. “You can see the evolution of art in regard to the period of the artist. I think you have to do something like that in dance. Not always, but sometimes.

“I try to invent a vocabulary for each work,” he added. “Strangely, I am slow and quick. I can work really quickly, but what I need is the time [first] to mature a piece. I really need to think a lot about it.”

* Ballet Preljocaj will dance “Hommage aux Ballets Russes” Tuesday and Wednesday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. The program opens the theater’s Contemporary Dance Series. 8 p.m. $24-$27. (949) 854-4646.