Paradise Redux in Harlem’s Lush Balletic Visions

What’s your idea of Eden--biblical, with an apple and a snake? Caribbean, with giant orchids hanging everywhere and magical creatures around each corner? Or maybe African, with sleek cats at play in the garden and the spirits of Youth, Hope and Blessing alive in human form?

No need to choose, when Dance Theatre of Harlem offered multiple visions of paradise in its sold-out program Saturday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. All three Edenic ballets on view featured complex scores (taped, alas) and dancers exploring space with a sense of wonder. All three used the classical vocabulary fluently--often seasoning it with folkloric, gymnastic or character-dance idioms--and all three showcased luminous Harlem ballerinas.

Indeed, the remarkable freshness and finesse of the female roster virtually dominated the evening’s one novelty, a recently expanded version of the plotless “South African Suite,” choreographed by Augustus Van Heerden, Laveen Naidu and company director Arthur Mitchell to recordings by the Soweto String Quartet. Right off, Caroline Rocher made child’s play of a solo requiring her to walk, bent double, on her fingers and pointes, as well as introduce a key gestural motif: fingers shimmering like rippling water.

Along with other nature metaphors, this motif kept alive a sense of environment, though the choreographers lacked the ability to mold classical dancing into something uniquely expressive a la Jerome Robbins and instead kept ricocheting between academic ballet and more contemporary or African modes. Thus Kellye A. Saunders and James Washington began their “Felines” duet with slinky floor maneuvers but soon dropped loose, sensual interplay for spine-straight, supported-adagio exactitude--the result strongly executed, of course, but ultimately less catlike than Puss in Boots and his partner in “The Sleeping Beauty.”

Besides Rocher and Saunders, “South African Suite” boasted Camille Parson in a brief but potent solo to East Indian tabla, alternating pointe work with Africanisms (mostly in the arms and upper torso) at high speed. An inconclusive warrior sequence and a passage of rhythmic body-slapping kept the men busy, but this very sweet South Africa proved most memorable when matriarchal.

In contrast, Eden belonged to the snake in Mitchell’s “Manifestations,” a 1975 dance drama adroitly set to a very slippery score by Primous Fountain III. A silver-skinned, androgynous, contortionist intruder into the chaste neoclassical partnering challenges assigned to Adam (Cubie Burke in briefs) and Eve (Saunders in a body stocking), this serpent took the form of Eric Underwood, who made a sensational entrance slithering down an overhead vine and combined menace with indolence.

The ballet’s equating of Balanchine-style partnering with heaven and sex with hell doesn’t bear consideration, but it remains fascinating to watch Mitchell rework for Adam and Eve many of the radical “Agon” partnering innovations he helped pioneer in 1957.

In an otherwise undercast performance of the company’s familiar 1982 “Firebird,” Leonore Pavlakos exuded all the warmth, charm and elegance needed to live up to the title of Princess of Unreal Beauty. However, Kip Sturm never rose above the dutiful as her suitor, and Andrea Long gave a spotty performance in the title role: impressive when putting the whammy on the monster corps and in the power bourrees of her exit, but prosaic in the opening solo and her duet with Sturm.

John Taras’ choreography may focus on riding the shifting moods, rhythms and densities of Stravinsky and stay strangely oblivious to the lush island context evoked in the sets and costumes by Geoffrey Holder. However, there’s no denying that this now seems the most enduring “Firebird” in the international repertory: a monument to creative Harlem reinterpretation.