Baryshnikov Still Steps Boldly

A week ago, Mikhail Baryshnikov told Larry King that he expects to quit dancing in a year or two. But like anyone planning major changes to the landscape, he should be required to first file an environmental impact survey.

After all, for more than a quarter-century, Baryshnikov has set the pace in the dance world--first for virtuosity, then for versatility and finally in the use of fame to foster audience development.

Like Baryshnikov, other dancers have invented steps that expanded the language of ballet (Irek Mukhamedov of the Bolshoi, for example). Others, too, have left classicism for indelible achievements in modern dance (Adam Cooper, for instance).

But what other ballet star has spent his 40s and early 50s not in profitable self-celebration but in the radical expansion of his artistic horizons? And who else besides Baryshnikov could fill a culture palace such as the 1,523-seat California Center for the Arts in Escondido and then turn it into an alternative space?

In Escondido on Friday, Baryshnikov and his White Oak Dance Project performed an uncompromisingly contemporary four-part program that included “The Experts,” the kind of experimental, iconoclastic piece that you’d expect to see in such venues as the Kitchen, Judson Church and Danspace in New York--exactly where choreographer Sarah Michelson has presented her previous work.

For starters, Michelson carpeted the stage in plastic bubble-wrap, with Baryshnikov and six colleagues sometimes moving soundlessly across its squishy surface but elsewhere popping so many bubbles with each step that the performance sounded like a tap-dance showpiece.

Besides the bubble wrap on the floor, the use of layers dominated the spatial organization of Michelson’s choreography, her white-on-white scenery, the costumes she and Tanya Uhlmann created and Mike Iveson’s score.

So even if the movement itself often looked random, unmodulated--just riffs in a void--the conceptual rigor encouraged you to look more closely.

And just as you began to resent that the supremely articulate dancers were being relegated to isolated hand spasms, leg swings, shoulder rotations and other discontinuities--along with the distractions of a racing car forever zooming by on an overhead projection screen--Emily Coates initiated a series of pristine, barefoot balances on half-toe, arms drifting lyrically.

As more dancers joined in, Michelson tapped into a whole new layer of dance technique and metaphor, asking White Oak to balance on bubbles, float a fraction above the stage and embody her vision of postmodern heaven.

No less challenging in its severity, Erick Hawkins’ 1961 quartet “Early Floating” explored formal positional shifts counterpointing the spare instrumental textures of Lucia Dlugoszewski’s “Five Curtains of Timbre.” Under a geodesic mobile by Ralph Dorazio, the dancing began in simple, sculptural movement phrases: Raise one leg high off the floor, with knee bent, and pivot to the front as your arms rise, for instance.

Soon, however, the alternation of hard and soft attacks introduced dynamic variety, and the lack of contact between dancers yielded to the use of touch as a motif: Baryshnikov’s and Coates’ feet touching, for instance, or him standing behind her and gently lifting her arms. Or Coates dancing between Roger C. Jeffrey and Zane Booker, their legs stroking hers.

Can there be Zen sensuality? If so, modern dance pioneer Hawkins evoked it in this seminal work, staged for White Oak by Katherine Duke.

The evening began and ended with Lucinda Childs’ recent solos for Baryshnikov. At 54, he looked disarmingly effortless in the expansive, sweeping turns and twisty interim steps of the moody “Largo” (to music by Arcangelo Corelli), and impressively intense in the dramatic, paranoid searching and whirling of the surprising coda to “Chacony” (to Benjamin Britten).

In his youth, Baryshnikov was acclaimed both for his technique and his acting; without turning back the clock, these two solos renewed those abilities in performances of meticulous control and full-out emotional power.

Before his entrance, “Chacony” had served as a sumptuous ensemble vehicle enlisting nearly all the current White Oak dancers: Coates, Jeffrey, Rosalynde LeBlanc, Miguel Anaya, Jennifer Howard and Sonja Kostich.

Here and in “Largo” you could see trademark postmodern walking-into-dancing passages (everyday motion suddenly heightened), as well as Childs’ cool take on her accompaniments. The emphasis on units of four (sometimes deployed in double duets) also enforced her characteristic sense of structural unity.

But the glowing backdrop, the elegant Deanna Berg costumes, the quasi-romantic partnerships and Childs’ focus on steps made her the most conventional choreographer Friday.

Yes, an artist who seemed, not long ago, as intimidating as Michelson now creates the relatively “safe” portions of a contemporary program. That, alone, should tell you how daring Baryshnikov’s White Oak has become.

White Oak Dance Project, May 23-25 at 8 p.m. and May 26 at 2 p.m., Lobero Theatre, 331 E. Canon Perdido, Santa Barbara. $75. (805) 963-0761.