Female Dancers Galvanize ‘Evolution’

After 45 years of international performances, it’s no surprise that Les Ballets Africains can flatten an audience with its combination of spectacular technique and powerhouse energy. However, the latest touring production by this National Dance Company of the Republic of Guinea suffers from conceptual growing pains: worthy expressive ambitions undercut by hard-sell showmanship, with the unfailingly fabulous performers left to pick up the pieces.

The company opened its North American tour in Costa Mesa on Friday, then moved to UCLA for the rest of the weekend. In Schoenberg Hall on Saturday, the new “Evolution” looked scenically bare, offering just a few bleary projections in place of the Frenchified opulence on view in previous visits. But the costume spectacle proved typically amazing, beginning with the blaze of thick, undulating stripes (white, turquoise and scarlet) worn by 11 women in the opening scene.

Stripes, stripes everywhere: vertical below the waist to enhance the dancers’ stabbing legwork, horizontal above to give their flung-out arms even greater impact. And from this galvanic ensemble, “Evolution” developed its emphasis on female prowess, though what the audience saw often bore little connection to the elaborate synopsis printed in the program booklet.

On the page, “Evolution” emphasized the process of cultural initiation and the interplay of past and present in contemporary Africa. On the stage, however, “Evolution” relied on one choreographic showpiece after another, with only occasional flashes of the thematic priorities that had distinguished the more sophisticated “Heritage” on the company’s last tour.

At one point, Koca Sale Dioubate stopped playing his small lute-like traditional African koni and happily continued his solo on a guitar: one small yet potent demonstration of the issues of continuity-in-change that “Evolution” announced as its raison d’e^tre yet mostly ended up either obscuring or fumbling.

The confrontation-dance between supposedly “traditional” and “modern” women in the finale looked particularly confused conceptually, in no way delivering the point (quoted from the synopsis) “that the modern movements are actually derivative of the traditional steps of their ancestors” but simply exploiting the situation for character-comedy and then dumping it in favor of a silly subplot about a flirtatious flutist.

No matter. Whether traditional or modern, striped or bare-breasted, the women of Les Ballets Africains danced with such clarity at such impossible velocities that they made “Evolution” memorable all by themselves, even joining the big, furioso drum ensemble (normally a male specialty) and helping make it one of the evening’s highlights.

Along with plenty of gymnastic displays, the men took on one of the few dances not based on the principle of acceleration and in-your-face technique: a relaxed, charming, cane dance in Act 2. Among the featured musicians, Mamadouba Mito Camara embodied djembe virility, Mohamed Sylla exemplified balaphonic finesse and Fode Kalissa reveled in the delicacy of the kora.

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* Les Ballets Africains dances “Evolution” tonight at 8 in the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd. $21.50 to 36.50. (805) 961-0571.