Stirring ‘Cocktail’ of Mambo, Ballet

With palm-frond shadows projected onto the auditorium walls, colored lights bombarding the audience and a long, long camera boom projecting from the balcony to film the performance, Raiford Rogers’ “Cocktails With Joey” returned to the Luckman Theatre on Saturday in a new upscale version celebrating the reunion of classical ballet with mambo noir.

Dapper bassist-composer Joey Altruda and his 18-piece orchestra supplied the mambos (both live and on tape) and Rogers’ stylish 13-member L.A. Chamber Ballet provided the dancing: sleek, mellow postmodern classicism stripped of 19th century fussiness and 20th century technical aggression until all that remained was pure linear flow.

Rogers likes to dream his way into pop music subgenres, distilling their essences in dance suites that also represent a fantasy of modern America in the same way that Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky ballets represent a fantasy of Imperial Russia. In “Cocktails With Joey,” he focuses on lounge culture, imagining the kind of people who would live their lives to the beat of Altruda mambos. Obviously, this isn’t exactly Pina Bausch territory, but Rogers’ tongue-in-cheek social portrait does frequently cross the same path as her bolder satires of pop culture in such works as “1980” and “Nur Du.”

Specifically, he gives us sun-kissed babes with nothing more to do than stretch seductively and keep their adoring, well-toned guys on a leash. Whether it’s Lisa Gillespie luring Michael Mizerany away from his bicycle for a gymnastic tryst, or Carol Guidry and Veronica Caudillo using two men each as chariots, this is a world where ballerinas rule--even if Rogers characteristically denies them any opportunity to dance on pointe.

A practice-clothes abstraction when it premiered two years ago, the ballet now boasts an array of costumes by Layne Nielson pulsing with intense color: florescent fuchsia, chartreuse, crimson and sky blue, sometimes alternating in layers and eventually offset with masses of black; usually unitardy in shape but occasionally loosened up with tutu-length skirts for the women, drawstring pants for the men or deeply flared trouser-legs for both. Lighting by Liz Stillwell and Eileen Cooley manages to enhance the gleam of Nielson’s fabrics while artfully matching the shifting moods of Altruda’s accompaniments.

As for Altruda, he opened the Saturday performance with a danceless hourlong set spotlighting a number of remarkable soloists--none, alas, listed in the house program. “Stop When Swinging” capitalized on such classic retro big-band values as massed ooblie-oo accented with irresistible tchika-boom, while “The Ski Lodge After Dark” sustained a brassy blare-wall less dominated by all its solos than artfully textured by them. The bluesy “Cuban Capers” introduced a softer Altruda sound (one that Rogers would seize upon later) and provided a showcase for his bass expertise. And his grand finale, “The Man With the Golden Arm,” exploited muscular attacks and forceful solos on trumpet, sax, trombone and drums plus a dark jazz ambience that, for once, provided plenty of noir without the mambo.

No further performances are scheduled but the event reportedly represented an audition for a major tour project.