A chic technique

At age 34, flamenco star Sara Baras doesn’t dance with the weight of the art’s resident sibyls or earth mothers. Nor does she embody private passions and the pride of the Gypsy underclass.

No, at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Wednesday, Baras danced for pleasure, connecting with her audience through eye contact and gestures -- even blowing kisses at one point. Indeed, you might label her Flamenco Lite, with no voluminous gowns, dark emotions or reverence for tradition blocking her sleek, contemporary display of spectacular technique and her love of dancing.

Baras’ program may be titled “Suenos” (Dreams), but it reflects her attempt to wake up and demystify an art that many outsiders see as a closed enclave rooted in the past. Out go a number of antique structures and strictures; in comes a list of priorities topped by accessibility and excitement.

Working with eight other dancers -- including guest artist Jose Serrano -- Baras experiments with long-form choreography: evolving ensembles full of challenging matched heelwork and, in the opening septet, assaultive counter-rhythms introduced through the use of wooden canes. It’s fresh and inventive, as far as it goes, and her company executes it strongly.

As a choreographer and soloist, Baras likes percussive rhythms that evolve into propulsive engines, and in one of her more amazing solo feats (repeated during the encores), she rapidly, evenly chugs across the stage, her feet not so much tapping as making ratcheting sounds that suggest wheels rolling over tracks.

While her foot-engines run with remarkable speed, force and clarity, her refined use of her arms and upper torso contributes variety and focus to her dances. A trio featuring Raul Fernandez and Raul Prieto uses heelwork sparingly at first, building interest primarily through her sinewy reaches, liquid wrist-curls and dynamic shifts in position.

Just as masterly: her ability to swiftly wrap a large, fringed shawl around her torso, swing it overhead, wield it like a bullfighter’s cape or fling it to the floor so that it becomes a kind of train behind her.

Her range of expression extends only from imperious to volatile, so when she dances opposite Serrano, it’s not in a depiction of love or lust but simply to allow another kind of technical attack. Like partners finishing each other’s sentences, they make overlapping movement statements, with Baras often taking over Serrano’s high-velocity heel-phrases and completing them, adding an extra flourish or burst of speed as commentary.

Serrano’s own solo places his flurries of showpiece steps within a distinctive action plan and mood: constant restless, rootless stage-prowling and deliberately rough gestures and turns that define a man on the edge. At the end, his spiral down to a crouch on one knee seems a capitulation to despair -- the only downbeat dance-image in this UCLA Live event.

On platforms behind the dancers, the musicians uphold flamenco intensity -- especially singers Miguel de la Tolea and Saul Quiros -- and the violin playing of Amador Goni exudes soul.

Guitarists Jose Maria Bandera and Mario Montoya often introduces a dance segment with intimate and even contemplative musicianship. Finally, Anton Suarez not only reinforces dance rhythms with his expert box-drumming but performs with pop drums and cymbals near the end of the program.

Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras is hardly the first or only company to update flamenco performance. However, “Suenos” repudiates the emphasis on dance drama -- telling stories, portraying characters -- adopted by an earlier generation of would-be reformers.

It sees flamenco primarily as a cluster of techniques that can be freed of any historical or recent agendas and enjoyed for their own sakes.

Some aficionados may find the result incomplete, but Baras is no pretentious New Flamenco charlatan trying to look like a rock star. Her credentials are impeccable; the only question is whether she sees flamenco dance as something bigger than just a happy diversion.

The company will also perform at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara on Tuesday.