Stuttgart Is Truly Inspired

The so-called Stuttgart Ballet “miracle” of the late 1960s and early ‘70s came from finding a classical company of great warmth and freshness in a southwest German burg familiar only to ballet historians with long memories or specialists in the production of wines, books and cars.

Today, in a vastly changed ballet landscape, the vibrant, humane classicism cultivated in the ‘60s by resident Stuttgart miracle-worker John Cranko remains intact, though Cranko died more than a quarter-century ago and it hasn’t exactly been easy sailing since.

But if the company’s three-part program at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Tuesday proved anything, it confirmed that whatever gives Stuttgart its ability to flatten an audience doesn’t essentially depend on Cranko’s celebrated story ballets, the now-legendary stars he developed or even major choreography. It goes deeper, something about the why of dancing, the life-affirming, communicative core.

Opening a seven-performance engagement--its first Southland visit in 19 years--the company preserved that core in performances of plotless ensemble pieces inspired by paintings, poems and people. In “Kazimir’s Colors” (1996), Italian choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti used music by Shostakovich to accompany a zesty tribute to Russian artist Kazimir Malevitch. In the moody “Dos Amores” (1999), Stuttgart corps member Christian Spuck set love-poetry by Pablo Neruda to a collage-score (Thierry de Mey, Vivaldi, Dieter Fenchel), adding splashy theatrical frissons as well.

Finally, Cranko’s “Initials R.B.M.E.” (1972) honored ‘70s Stuttgart stars Richard Cragun, Birgit Keil, Marcia Haydee and Egon Madsen with a formal, large-scale divertissement danced to Brahms.

*

Despite their obvious differences, each work tries to humanize and update the academic classical vocabulary in exactly the same way. “Initials R.B.M.E.” offers the most coherent sense of classicism, but in the whimsical head-nodding and peekaboo gestural ploys that Cranko assigns the corps, he initiates the approach that Spuck and Bigonzetti expand with radical boldness until classical style becomes hopelessly fractured. These pieces work as diversions, but they leave major questions unanswered about where Stuttgart classicism is going.

In the Spuck and Bigonzetti pieces, dancers always generate movement from a classical base, but then, inevitably, a sudden anti-classical kick-spasm (the former) or molten body-slump (the latter) will proclaim contemporary irreverence in capital letters.

Each varies the pattern artfully while using all the discontinuities as a kind of a pre-fab metaphor for modern life. Spuck’s cleverness mixes gender-bending costume changes and the movement of a half-dozen silver pendulums into his “Amores,” while Bigonzetti’s “Colors” capitalizes on Bridget Breiner’s ability to make her high-speed meltdowns look drop-dead awesome. But all the antic juxtapositions on view are merely marking time while somebody else develops a unified vision of classical dance for the 21st century.

It could happen in this very company (Kylian, Neumeier and Forsythe all started here), for the dancers not only offer the same technical daring you’ll find just about anywhere these days but a rare ability to transform choreographic shreds and patches into powerful personal statements.

Breiner may have represented the big discovery on Tuesday, both in the protean ballerina role of “Colors” and the playful “Amores” kiss-duet that launched the finale. But the evening also belonged to the womanly Julia Kramer as an “Amores” celebrant and the “B.” in “Initials” and to the lyrical Ivanna Illyenko as the “M.”

Among the prominent men, the fleet and light Thomas Lempertz needed more elegance of bearing for the “E.” role, but Ivan Cavallari partnered Kramer very suavely earlier in the same work. However, Tamas Detrich made his duet with Illyenko here unnecessarily bumpy--a fine dramatic dancer but no cavalier.

Assigned leading roles in all three pieces, Robert Tewsley looked superbly supple and virtuosic in the switcheroos and ricochets of Spuck and Bigonzetti but strangely clenched and technically uneven in the Cranko’s classical display dancing. A puzzlement.

Although two of the pieces receive live accompaniment at home, the company danced everything Tuesday to tape--just as in every previous city on the tour.

*

* The Stuttgart Ballet repeats this program tonight at 8. The company performs John Cranko’s “Onegin” Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 2 p.m. Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $12-$68. (714) 556-2787.