BalletFest Becomes an Exercise

Spotlighting the growing pains as much as the achievements of Southland classicism, the three weekend programs of BalletFest 2001 brought to the stage of the Luckman Fine Arts Complex six struggling and/or emerging local ensembles--plus one guest company from the North.

Two of the troupes shared dancers, two others borrowed their lead males from out of state. Even so, mismatches reigned: strikingly tall ballerinas opposite diminutive partners, for example, or capable soloists working with corps women who continually fell off pointe, or whole casts straining to meet the challenge of repertory masterworks.

As in last year’s event, the lone outsider--in this case, Sacramento Ballet--managed to outclass the locals with dancing of easy professionalism. Indeed, the company also provided the strongest new choreography on view: Amy Seiwert’s “Passive/Aggression,” a forceful contemporary quartet to music by Jega that offered the only exploratory pointe work of the entire festival.

Like all the weekend excerpts from 19th century repertory, Sacramento’s Black Swan pas de deux suffered from inadequate coaching that left the dancers looking interpretively impoverished and technically unfinished--especially in the use of the upper torso and shoulders. But Jared Nelson and Kirsten Bloom executed the steps effectively.

California Ballet of San Diego looked much more winning when parodying classical ballet in Michael Uthoff’s joke-filled “William Tell” pas de deux than when floundering through a distortion of the “Sleeping Beauty” vision scene. Yvonne Montelius danced respectably in both pieces.

Inland Pacific Ballet gave itself unsolvable stylistic problems by choosing to perform Pierre Lacotte’s approximation of the antique pas de six from “La Vivandiere” instead of the earlier, more authentic Ann Hutchinson Guest reconstruction danced by the Joffrey Ballet. Kelly Lamoureux and Jordi Ribera danced the leading roles unevenly.

Happily, Inland Pacific did provide BalletFest with its most distinguished revival: George Balanchine’s “Serenade” in a new Patricia Neary staging of superb freshness and clarity. The emotional arc of the work may yet be incompletely defined, but Jessika Hughes, Daniel Kirk, Kelly Lamoureux, Samantha Mason, Steven Voznick and the corps served its choreographic invention vividly enough to make much of the new BalletFest choreography look derivative and stale.

Among the home-grown repertory, Laurence Blake’s “Sonata” used the neoclassic Balanchine legacy resourcefully, though this well-danced showcase for eight Pasadena Dance Theatre women succumbed to unsuitable accompaniment: isolated bursts and wisps of music by Martinu. “Curtain,” by Blake and Douglas Nielsen and set to music by Zhao Jiping, served the Pasadena women more successfully through its constant, intriguing redefinitions of movement vocabulary and stage space.

As long as composer-pianist Sandra Tsing Loh remained onstage, Raiford Rogers’ “CF Remix” for 11 dancers of Los Angeles Chamber Ballet stayed just as potent, focused, exciting as her accompaniment. But when she left midway through and the piece continued to recorded music by Amon Tobin, all the intensity and invention oozed away, leaving Rogers to recycle too many of his familiar strategies--such as the mass fashion-model preening in the finale.

In contrast to the Pasadena and Chamber Ballet abstractions, the Francisco Martinez Dancetheatre offered quasi-narratives in a backdated hothouse lyrical style in “Sing to Me of Love” (to Vaughan Williams). But all the swoony, swirly character duets worked better when lightened with humor in Martinez’s “Fostering Dreams” (to Stephen Foster).

In any case, both of these works seemed to be fumbling toward a form of nostalgic expression brought to perfection 33 years ago by Frederick Ashton with far greater technical variety in “Enigma Variations.”

Completing BalletFest: the crude cartoon feminism of Cynthia Bradley’s “Is That All There Is,” a suite to Peggy Lee records that proved so raggedly danced by San Pedro City Ballet that its presence in the weekend lineup seemed inexplicable.

An exhibit of Donald Bradburn’s fine dance photographs proved a welcome supplement to the performances. But next year, please, larger prints, brighter lighting and more complete documentation.