Gliding around the topic

VIDEOCASSETTES revolutionized the study and appreciation of dance by giving everyone a new interactive relationship with the art. Play it, repeat it, play something it resembles that came earlier or later, go to a performance of a classic knowing a dozen other versions, watch every Fred Astaire film in a single weekend. What other generation has had so much access?

DVD is even better: smaller on the shelf but much greater in all the choices it provides beyond viewing the main program.

Yet although concert dance has always been quick to exploit breakthroughs in technology, nearly all the newest dance releases on DVD offer no more features than could have been accommodated on VHS decades ago.

Go figure: When modern dance companies regularly provide pre- and post-performance lectures, we should be getting discs on which choreographers, company directors or historians take us inside the dance experience through an optional second audio track.

Moreover, just like the movies, such classic ballets as “Giselle” and “Swan Lake” have plenty of deleted scenes and alternate endings to intrigue aficionados -- if we could see them.

No such luck. At the moment, enhanced image quality and instant access to specific sections of a program are the major benefits of dance DVDs -- those, and the availability of classic performances never previously released because videotape was much easier to illegally duplicate.

Most of the time, in fact, dance-for-camera falls into one of two main categories: either the preservation of great theatrical performances or fusions of choreography and film or video that would be impossible to achieve onstage. By contrast, “America Dances! 1897-1948, a Collector’s Edition of Social Dance on Film” belongs in a category of its own: archival footage showing the evolution of dance within popular culture.

Available from Dancetime Publications (www.DancetimePublications.com), this 79-minute compilation provides no analysis or overview, just vintage black-and-white clips culled mainly from newsreels, shorts and TV shows.

Not merely of historical interest, the footloose performances of the Charleston and other antique fad-dances gathered here are invariably more exciting than the watered-down versions devised by contemporary choreographers for Broadway, TV or the movies. And “America Dances!” also continually reminds the viewer of how central African American culture is to the study of this whole subject.

But there’s a drawback: All the music that originally accompanied these clips has been replaced by David Shepard piano performances -- heroic in matching the onscreen rhythms, but still less than ideal, especially in the raucous Lindy Hop sequences. Producer Carol Teten says that laboriously researching and then obtaining music rights “would have rendered the project undoable,” and that’s unfortunate because the result is invaluable but incomplete.

Vault treasures of another sort come from VAI (Video Artists International, www.vaimusic.com) with the release of Marius Petipa’s “Sleeping Beauty” and Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella” in shortened Royal Ballet performances from the 1950s starring Margot Fonteyn, Michael Somes and Ashton himself. Originally telecast in color on the NBC “Producer’s Showcase” series, they exist now only in black-and-white -- clearer somehow in the 66-minute 1955 “Sleeping Beauty” than in the 78-minute “Cinderella” from two years later.

Adapted by Ashton and directed by Clark Jones, these productions were reconceived for live television; elaborate, linked sets allowed the characters to dance from one room to another or even to journey though a magical forest into an enchanted palace. So just as contemporary dancers have much to learn from the extraordinary expressive detail of these performances, filmmakers and videographers ought to study the remarkable flow and visual variety that Jones and his designers brought to these projects.

Dancing in her late 30s, Fonteyn commanded all the ballerina technique of the time as well as an interpretive incandescence of her own. Some of the brilliant sharpness in “Cinderella” (choreographed for Moira Shearer of “Red Shoes” fame) clearly taxes her, but her dancing proves that her stardom was incontrovertible long before her celebrated partnership with Rudolf Nureyev began in the early 1960s.

A bare-chested, red-haired Nureyev turns up in the rarest segment of “Zizi Jeanmaire Dances Roland Petit,” an 80-minute compilation from Kultur (www.kultur.com). Here you can find the irrepressibly saucy French dance diva (a.k.a. Mrs. Petit) in the title roles of “Carmen” and “The Diamond Cruncher,” both taken from a four-part 1960 feature film released in America under the title “Black Tights.” Terence Young directed.

But because Kultur uses the slightly different French original (titled “Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre!”), there’s a bonus: a song defiantly sung by Jeanmaire midway through “The Diamond Cruncher” that proclaims her taste for precious jewels. It’s missing from both the Triton DVD of the complete “Black Tights” and the old VHS edition on VAI.

As for Nureyev, he’s lured to suicide by Jeanmaire in a compelling performance of “Le Jeune Homme et la Mort” directed for television in 1966 by Petit himself. But be warned: Petit revised and abstracted his dance drama for this film, removing any trace of the young man’s identity from the set and costume design and also cutting the final scene, in which the woman reappears as the angel of death. As Jean Babilee, the French star who created the role of the young man in 1946, said recently, it became a different ballet when he stopped dancing it.

And then ... beyond words

Choreographic revisionism also weakens two other recent releases on Kultur: a fine 1990 Australian Ballet performance of “Coppelia” and an underdanced program of four ballets by Mikhail Fokine titled, for some strange reason, “The Kirov Celebrates Nijinsky.” (The illustrious Vaslav Nijinsky had no connection with one of these ballets and danced a different version of another.)

In Peggy van Praagh’s staging of “Coppelia,” Dr. Coppelius displays genuine magic powers in the very first scene, which undercuts his transparently ridiculous attempts to make a mannequin come to life in Act 2. Other narrative and choreographic deviations from what has become the standard international text of this classic prove equally questionable -- but designer Kristian Fredrikson has enormous fun with the mechanical dolls, as do we.

Led by Lisa Pavane and Greg Horsman, a company completely unknown to Southern California audiences dances with great flair and exactitude. Pavane (a great name for a dancer) goes on automatic pilot in Act 3 but earlier has all the charm, versatility and comic flair needed for a distinguished Swanilda. As for Horsman (not a great name for a dancer, no matter how you pronounce it), he partners capably and makes the most of the ballet’s limited opportunities for male dancing. Virginia Lumsden directed.

Recorded in Paris, the Kirov program includes “Sheherazade,” with Svetlana Zakharova and Farukh Ruzimatov; “Le Spectre de la Rose,” with Zhanna Ayupova and Igor Kolb; the “Polovtsian Dances” from “Prince Igor,” with Islom Baimuradov; and “The Firebird,” with Diana Vishneva, Yana Serebriakova and Andrei G. Yakovlev.

Given this repertory and cast, the performance should be terrific, even if Ross MacGibbon’s cameras sometimes point in the wrong directions. Alas, only the equally radiant Ayupova and Serebriakova go beyond dutiful professionalism on what was clearly a great company’s off night. Moreover, a pas de deux that was not in the original “Sheherazade” and a red tutu that was not in the original “Firebird” create major misconceptions about what these ballets looked like when they startled the dance world nearly a century ago.

All these DVDs manipulate dance history though abridgement, interpolation, rescoring or reinterpretation -- and all would be enriched by explanatory background features or interviews on an extra audio track. Ironically, the one recent release that does come with bonus material doesn’t need it: “Grupo Corpo Companhia de Danca,” a look at Brazil’s best-known contemporary dance troupe.

Besides powerful performances of “Bach” and “O Corpo,” two 40-minute abstractions by artistic director Rodrigo Pederneiras, the Kultur disc includes a 43-minute documentary on the company by Jurgen Wilcke. Discussions about an ensemble aesthetic and Latin American consciousness dominate the interviews, with Pederneiras sounding dangerously disingenuous when he makes a big distinction between being “naturally” versus “consciously” Brazilian.

No matter. For once, the choreography and dancing need no explanation. Director Thomas Grimm keeps us alert to the group ebb and flow as well as all the details and interplay that give the pieces their distinct textures. It would be great if the choreographer or director invited viewers to choose between different camera angles -- one of the special features available on the DVD of the film “Moulin Rouge.” But that’s about the only newfangled technical option that could make Grupo Corpo look any more sensational.