Stale Choreography Robs Ballet Pacifica of Freshness

In her first 10 years as Ballet Pacifica artistic director, Molly Lynch gave the Irvine-based company a distinctive national profile by welcoming both established and emerging choreographers to join her widely respected workshop and development projects. Unfortunately, most of the Ballet Pacifica program Saturday afternoon in the Irvine Barclay Theatre found her good intentions betrayed by choreographers intent on reworking cliches and other people’s innovations rather than creating anything genuinely new.

In only the second performance anywhere of Paul Vasterling’s “Saltimbanques,” for instance, every hackneyed ploy and stale joke of the cutesie-poo clown-ballet genre made the company look as if it were attempting some sort of dust-bin revival. Set to the two-piano version of Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” it relied overmuch on the vivacity of such promising young artists as Erin Holmes and Bernie Del Gado, along with the hard-sell bravura of resident Pacifica virtuoso Shawn Pace, without giving them anything remotely worthy in return.

Even worse: Stephen Mills’ “The Naughty Ones,” a suite of aggressive duets that may have provided Mills with a partnering lab but left the dancers mired in very, very backdated notions of pop dance style. More than 40 years after Jerome Robbins reshaped classicism to express the energies and rhythms of a new generation, simply swinging your hips on pointe or snapping your fingers just doesn’t qualify as contemporary. The breezy elevation of Spencer Gavin Hering and the eagerness of Gina Cerato, Eloisa Enerio and (again) Del Gado kept you watching--but this charade belonged back in the workshop.

Forty-four years ago, Martha Graham’s “Seraphic Dialogue” showed Joan of Arc reliving her past by watching three other women embody facets of her life. Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s “Spy” borrowed this format to retell the story of author Anais Nin, though Taylor-Corbett found no sustained dance opportunities for her four Nins and left most of the storytelling to composer-vocalist Judith Lander. Even when forced to shove her way into passages dominated by other Nincarnations, Melissa Ehrmann made the central role a sympathetic showcase, but a dance-drama with little dance and less drama isn’t exactly compelling.

All honor, then, to choreographer David Allan for taking the biggest risks on the program and generating not only dance and drama but a powerful sense of company cohesion. Commissioned by Lynch in 1996, his “Out of the Shadows” used a notoriously tricky score--Gorecki’s abrasive string quartet “Quasi Una Fantasia”--and artfully sidestepped all its dangers except one: the long pauses between short phrases, here staged pointlessly as tableaux. Otherwise, Allan made the music yield a potent, futuristic movement style and the intense conflict of individuals being tested by a pitiless environment.

Ultimately, the piece focused on four men--Pace, Hering, Tim La Viano and Raymond Van Mason (replacing Michel Gervais)--with a cadre of women emerging as their guides and protectors. As risky as Allan’s choice of music, this structure asked more of the Pacifica men than the obvious qualities exploited by the other Saturday pieces: a dimension of artistry quite different than simply looking hunky in a supported adagio or executing showpiece steps in a solo. It asked for growth and offered, in return, an authentic dance adventure to believe in and belong to--the best possible gift from a choreographer or company.