Don Cossacks Move, Sing With Soul

When people talk about “the Russian soul,” they may be naming a number of deeply felt moods that are more or less enhanced by too much vodka. But if the subject is Russian soul music, that would have to be the rhapsodic a cappella choral singing of folk songs, sterling examples of which the Don Cossacks Song and Dance Ensemble of Rostov brought to Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts Saturday night.

Based in the Southern Russian town of Rostov-on-Don, this company has much in common with other Soviet-style folk troupes. It presented a well-tempered program of theatricalized folk music and dance that was lively, not too long and varied in tempo and mood.

The company’s songs are remarkably stirring. The simple strategy of having 27 singers sweep forward in an arc, breaking the silence with voices that could melt glass, works especially well when the mood is forlorn. Often set in lonely places, traditional men’s songs such as “At Dawn,” “Hunter in the Marsh” and “The Steppe” conjured up ghostly thoughts with harmonies that chilled and thrilled at the same time.

The company features few vocal solos, but Vladimir Shlykov and Anatoly Vrkhovodov occasionally got a chance to raise the hair on the back of your neck with their resonant voices.

And since the women get left behind while the Cossacks are out doing what they do on the Steppe, their melancholy songs rose in forceful harmonies that seemed like they contain equal parts mourning, defiance and hope. During more cheerful songs, both women and men singers broke into modest dances, the kind of contagiously rhythmic sashaying, tilting and stamping you might find in a village get-togethers.

Flashier choreographies were reserved for the dancers and were often eye-catching with their fluctuating geometry and pleasing unison. Dressed in their traditional collarless long shirts, military caps and pants tucked into boots, the men occasionally tossed off barrel turns and the familiar high kicks from a squatting position. The women did dexterous spins and jaunty heel kicking in their short red boots, often garbed in too many ruffles in too many clashing colors.

A particularly evocative piece called “Nightingale, Sing a Song in the Garden,” by Alexander Khmelnitsky, made maximum use of lyrical walking and interweaving lines of dancers.

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Suites of vignettes represented “village life,” accompanied by the small onstage orchestra. The oddly titled “The Cossacks Were Guaranteed in Billets” had a funny drunk, a demure girl attracting a handsome lad, and a pushy mama pressing her gawky daughter on a hapless Cossack (hapless is another word for “short” in an ensemble that relies on cliches). This and other comic interludes (the audience roared at a tired but expertly pantomimed trio of old-timer Cossacks called “Grandfathers”) were good-natured but can wear thin.

It seems that Russian soul music is somewhat more evolved than Russian folk dancing. The theatricalized way of presenting folk dance often falls into enforced cheerfulness--grinning girls, strapping guys, happy peasants. Call it a kind of “Up With Cossacks” feeling.

Still, it’s a formula that works well. Eventually, the many colors of Russian soul music always return, and it’s impossible to resist that.