In German dance, the heart moves first

In life, there was only one Vaslav Nijinsky, but in each Hamburg Ballet performance last week of “Nijinsky,” a John Neumeier dance-drama about this unique virtuoso and choreographer, there were seven: one enmeshed in the title character’s tangled relationships, six representing the roles he created that came to define his legend.

Rare is the company that can field seven Nijinskys in a single night, but Hamburg did it, cast after cast, from Wednesday through Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Indeed, you could argue that it outdanced the Bolshoi Ballet in that troupe’s last appearance on the same stage.

At first, stellar company principals played the key Nijinsky incarnations -- Harlequin, the Faun, the Spectre of the Rose, the Golden Slave, Petrushka -- but those roles soon passed down the Hamburg hierarchy, with no loss of impact, to dancers ranked as soloists and members of the corps.

On Friday, for instance, soloist Arsen Megrabian danced the Spectre with such perfect mastery of the role’s technique and style that you wished the company had brought an evening of the reference ballets used as the basis for the “Nijinsky” dance clips -- a wish that corps dancer Boyko Dossev also inspired with his intensity as Petrushka.

Capped by the brilliant lead performances of identical twins Jiri and Otto Bubenicek, Hamburg’s casting in depth matched the density of excellence that the Stuttgart Ballet displayed in Costa Mesa a year ago: dream debuts by Filip Barankiewicz and Elena Tentschikowa as Romeo and Juliet (though not together), star power galore from the likes of Jiri Jelinek, Yseult Lendval, Thomas Lempertz and a host of others.

It’s easy to fall under the spell of such a remarkable constellation of artists -- and just as easy to wonder what exactly German companies have that their American counterparts so conspicuously lack. State support, for starters. That support may be eroding -- as the imminent demise of William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet reveals -- but Hamburg can still afford to sustain not only high company standards but a tradition of artistic risk. With its narrative experimentation and overlapping layers of imagery, “Nijinsky” makes demands on its audiences at a time when ill-funded American companies are so close to fiscal ruin that they must resort to such mindless crossover pap as Dance Theatre of Harlem’s banal “St. Louis Woman,” seen at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion a month ago.

American Ballet Theatre, also in fiscal crisis, promises the greatest stars, but even when the casting lives up to the promises, the leads seem to float above an under-coached, under-rehearsed ensemble -- one more consequence of budgetary shortfalls. And while those leads take fancy salaries for dancing American Ballet’s increasingly disreputable versions of the 19th century classics, they often choose to reinvest the money in edgier projects elsewhere -- Julio Bocca, for instance, commissions provocative new choreography in his native Argentina. Here it’s tutus, tights and tiaras; there, pansexual tango and bold social commentary.

Besides government support, German concert dance benefits from a dramatic tradition going all the way back to 18th cen- tury choreographer-theoretician Jean-Georges Noverre, who considered ballet, most of all, to be “the art of impressing, by truly significant movements, gesture and facial expressions, our feelings on the minds of the audience.” For all its complexity, “Nijinsky” reflects that commit- ment, while “St. Louis Woman” reflects the American obsession with flashy steps. It has a colorful story to tell, distinctive characters to explore and passionate music to embody, but all we get is in-your-face virtuosity, step upon step.

One root of that obsession may lie in the influence of George Balanchine, who found in the unadorned academic classical vocabulary and the heritage of Western symphonic music all he needed to create an unparalleled repertory of masterworks. Lesser choreographers, however, lacking his inspired musicality, have turned his preference for abstraction into mere showcasing, emphasizing an athleticism that reduces or eliminates narrative, character, emotion and theme in favor of technical flamboyance.

As an expatriate American, Neumeier understands these issues, and his “Nijinsky” begins by depicting them in a sequence representing the title character’s last public performance, in 1919. Performing in a hotel ballroom, Nijinsky first offers his onstage audience a deeply personal, inventive and volatile solo -- to an indifferent response.

But when he adopts a painted smile, behaves in a predictably antic fashion and throws in lots of jumps and tricks, his public adores him. So even before we learn anything else about the man, we see the extremes of his profession: ballet as circusy entertainment versus its potential for the most searching and powerful revelations.

Germany has its own style of abstraction -- as Forsythe’s company will prove later this season when it makes one last visit to Southern California -- but that style too is centered in an individual vision of the senses and emotions. And unless you have Balanchine’s genius, such a vision may be a better inspiration for ballet achievement than the realm of steps, for feelings can give you steps (as Martha Graham once famously observed), but steps alone ultimately take you nowhere.