Khoroshky: Spirit and Vigor

The 25-year-old Belorussian National Dance Ensemble Khoroshky stands midway between the first-generation Slavic folk companies, with their emphasis on costume spectacle and flashy technique, and more recent innovators who prize thematic sophistication and refinement of style.

Dancing a 20-part program on Sunday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, the company exuded spirit and authority, projecting the details of each piece with great vigor, so that it was impossible to miss the tilts of head, shakes of shoulders or gestural specifics that gave many dances their character--even in the elaborate costumes on view.

Company director Nikolay Dudchenko adopted many of the standard, questionable stylizations of theatrical folk dance: putting everyone of a particular social class into identical clothing, for instance, and, of course, fostering the illusion that villagers are always 18 to 30 years of age.

A sprightly, diminutive senior named Fydor Balabaika proved an exception to this policy, but otherwise the company promoted a musical comedy view of folklore--a view also occasionally evident in Valentina Gayevaya’s choreography.

Her overly cute “Pictures of Bobruysk,” for instance, showed Belorussian Jews in rich velvets and satins dancing with thumbs permanently attached to their lapels, while the use of a big corps for “Kokhanochka” worked against the intimacy and romantic longing she wanted to express. Half the people would make this dance twice as effective.

However, Gayevaya’s Renaissance choreography offered aristocratic splendor galore along with intriguing insights into antique sexual politics, and she continually found ways to sustain entertainment values without an overreliance on the inevitable squat kicks, barrel turns and other outbursts of virtuosity a la Russe.

Even before Gayevaya cranked up the bravura, soloist Vladimir Stepanovich had drawn gasps with his impossibly high and easy knee-to-nose extensions and the Khoroshky women had displayed unusually fleet and precise footwork.

Unlike some Slavic ensembles in which males get all the showy steps while females stay essentially decorative, complexity remained a shared responsibility in the Khoroshky dances.

Under the direction of Yuri Pshenichniy, a dozen tireless, versatile, over-amplified singers and instrumentalists accompanied the dancing and periodically performed on their own.

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Khoroshky also appears Tuesday, 8 p.m., Fred Kavli Theatre, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks, $27-$47, (805) 449-2775; Saturday, 8 p.m., Copley Symphony Hall, 1245 7th Ave., San Diego, $30-$50, (619) 235-0804; Jan. 23, 8 p.m., Riverside Municipal Auditorium, 3485 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside, $25.50-$47.50, (909) 788-3944; Jan. 31, 8 p.m., Performing Arts Center at Cal State Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge, $15-$19, (818) 677-3943.