Still radical after all

History plays strange tricks in the art world. The musical innovations that caused violent controversy in the second decade of the 20th century have long ago been assimilated into the language and tradition of classical music. But the dances that inspired or embodied those scores look as radical and even shocking today as they did back then.

That’s one lesson of the Diaghilev revivals from 1912, 1913 and 1917 danced by the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago on Thursday, the opening night of the company’s six-performance run at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Impresario Sergei Diaghilev liked choreography that used the academic ballet vocabulary as merely a starting point -- or training system -- for creative experiment, and the Joffrey revivals of Diaghilev repertory always have reminded audiences of the startling, visionary results that his artistic direction produced.

You could find toe shoes on one lady acrobat in Leonide Massine’s “Parade” on Thursday, but nowhere else -- and, significantly, “Parade” expressed the idea that old-fashioned entertainment can’t find an audience any longer.

To illustrate his point, Massine showed performers and their managers trying unsuccessfully to promote their show while diverting us with their antics. His choreography adapted movement from such activities as sword swallowing, silent-film acting and tightrope walking, while Erik Satie’s score incorporated such sound effects as sirens, gunshots and a typewriter.

However, any illusion of reality ballet was deliberately shattered by the designs: Cubist fantasies by Pablo Picasso that still convey a sense of childlike wonder. And that mood or aura proved the unifying premise of the fine performance Thursday.

Calvin Kitten bounded weightlessly as the Chinese Conjuror, less menacing than some of his predecessors but very authoritative. Julianne Kepley and Matthew Roy Prescott stylishly combined ballet steps and gymnastics as the Acrobats. Jennifer Goodman juxtaposed the old soft shoe and high-velocity pantomime as the Little American Girl. And, as usual, nobody eclipsed the dancing horse (David Gombert and Michael Smith) with its retro step routines and fabulous Picasso mask.

Massine himself restaged “Parade” for the Joffrey, but Vaslav Nijinsky’s “Afternoon of a Faun” exists in several versions, with the Joffrey reconstruction credited to Elizabeth Schooling and William Chappell. Questions about its accuracy have arisen recently and, unfortunately, the Thursday performance made no great case for it. Everyone worked skillfully to execute the stylized, frieze-like movement (based on poses on ancient Greek vase paintings), but the dancing took place in an emotional void.

At one point, Davis Robertson as the Faun confronted Deborah Dawn as the Leader of the Nymphs, but the overwhelming desire that was supposed to bring her to her knees simply wasn’t there. Yes, he breathed heavily and glared in her direction, and she crumbled on cue. But nothing happened between them, and the ballet went nowhere.

Worse, the lighting by Kevin Dreyer -- which also muted the fabled backdrops in “Parade” and the evening’s closer, “The Rite of Spring” -- utterly nullified the glorious golds and greens of Leon Bakst’s “Faun” decor. The Impressionist score by Claude Debussy glowed and shimmered, but Bakst’s enchanted grove looked streaked and muddy.

Pieced together by Millicent Hodson (who researched the Nijinsky choreography) and Kenneth Archer (who focused on the Nicholas Roerich decor), “The Rite of Spring” has become known for its galvanic Igor Stravinsky music; the final sequence, in which a Chosen Maiden dances herself to death; and, of course, the riot at its premiere 90 years ago.

That was then. On Thursday, conductor Leslie B. Dunner kept the rhythmic impulses strong, and Maia Wilkins danced efficiently as the sacrificial virgin -- with a strong sense of her body numbing out toward the end. But it’s unlikely that anyone at the Pavilion saw this “Rite” as a grotesque affront to Western civilization.

Instead, Nijinsky’s sophisticated sense of structure and imagery kept asserting itself in one sequence after another, taming his image as ballet’s wild man. Deftly alternating and juxtaposing isolated groups, he brought a sense of coloristic variety to the insistent drive of the score while advancing the cause of corps -- ballet as the dance art of the future.

That future, though, didn’t happen. So, even in an uneven Joffrey performance, Nijinsky’s “Rite” still looks radical in a century in which audiences desperately rely on stars, mini-stars or quasi-stars for ballet thrills. An alumnus of the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg (now the Kirov), he knew where classical ballet had been, and he put his vision of where it might go on stage for Diaghilev. We’re still not there, not nearly, and programs like this one remind us of what a very different road we’ve taken.

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Joffrey Ballet of Chicago

Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: Today, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7:30 p.m.

Price: $25 to $85

Contact: (213) 972-0711