Visions and versions

JUST as the once-mighty DVD seems headed for the same technological graveyard as eight-track audiotapes, vinyl record albums and VHS video, more and more dance performances -- newly shot as well as rereleased -- are showing up in that format.

There is little that connects most of them, but four recent DVDs turn out to be linked by questions of adaptation. Although the central issue is sometimes a project’s path from stage to screen, more often it’s the stage version itself. Whether the content is a solo transcribed from 18th century notation, an avant-garde ensemble piece or a classic of Franco-Russian ballet, someone stands between the original choreography and contemporary viewers -- making changes, reinterpreting -- and that someone can’t always be trusted.

In the ballet world, the words “after Petipa” cover a multitude of sins, some relatively benign. That’s the case with former Kirov star Natalia Makarova’s 1980 revision of Marius Petipa’s “La Bayadere,” newly issued by TDK in a vibrant 2006 performance by Milan’s La Scala Ballet. Available from Naxos of America at $29.99, the DVD features Svetlana Zakharova and Roberto Bolle as the titular Indian temple dancer and the warrior who loves her wisely but not too well.

Originally staged for American Ballet Theatre, the Makarova “Bayadere” downplays Petipa’s interest in exotic balleticized folklore and focuses instead on his pure classicism. Moreover, it transfers passages and supplies new choreography to create an approximation of what Makarova assumed was a long-lost last act. (Notation existed to supply what was missing, but few people knew about it at the time.) The result is an edition crafted with enormous care but wholly Makarova’s reconception in its choreographic scope, sequencing and action-plan.

Sidestepping tradition

TELEVISION director Tina Protasoni delivers a curiously flat and dark transcription of the work’s celebrated “Kingdom of the Shades” entrance ensemble but otherwise serves Makarova and La Scala resourcefully. Zakharova’s serene balances, floating jumps and high extensions work brilliantly up through the first “Shades” duet, though afterward she begins to look over-driven. Bolle partners her strongly but seems heavier than in their previous La Scala pairings (or is it that she’s even thinner this time?). French ballerina Isabelle Brusson dances diligently as Gamzatti, the ballet’s female villain, but lacks the dramatic and technical edge the role requires. The DVD comes with an illustrated booklet but no special features.

Another star defector from the Kirov Ballet takes on Petipa (and Lev Ivanov) in Rudolf Nureyev’s “Swan Lake,” danced by the Paris Opera Ballet in a less persuasive 2005 performance led by Agnes Letestu and Jose Martinez. Issued by Opus Arte (and available from Naxos of America at $29.99), the DVD offers minimal extras, but its accompanying booklet does help untangle Nureyev’s none-too-clear psychosexual interpretation of the ballet.

As usual with Nureyev adaptations, there’s more male dancing than is traditional -- for the dual role of Rothbart and the Tutor here as well as for the Prince. But this is a different Nureyev “Swan Lake” from the one he choreographed and filmed in Vienna in the 1960s. It still opts for authentic 1895 Petipa and Ivanov choreography in some sections but inserts new dances here and there for no evident purpose -- usually misusing music notable for a superb sense of unity and flow by imposing a series of hectic, arbitrary tasks.

Like Protasoni, television director Francois Roussillon adopts some filmic trickery to pump up the supernatural effects in the ballet. But he switches camera angles so often in the corps passages that some of them become unwatchable.

What’s more, the close-ups reveal how passionless the technically secure Letestu (steely as Odette, transparently nasty as Odile) and Martinez (generally vacant except at the end) remain in this assignment. French classicism from an earlier epoch is reconstructed in “The Art of Baroque Dance,” from Dancetime Publications (www.dancetimepublications.com; $39.95). Subtitled “Folies d’Espagne: From Page to Stage,” this 45-minute DVD begins with a well-illustrated history lesson, then shows how choreography by Louis-Guillaume Pecour (1653-1729) can be revived based on notation from the early 1700s by Raoul-Auger Feuillet. You’re even invited to download the disc onto your computer to obtain the Feuillet notation, should you want to attempt your own reconstruction.

Exactly how the steps fit with the music -- and which variations of the music to use -- must be negotiated by experts, so, obviously, this project will be of interest primarily to specialists. But the discussion of the relationship between gestures and steps will give any balletomane insights about bedrock concepts of ballet style. And the intricate, lively performances by Gilles Poirier and Natalie van Parys (the project’s writer-director) should overturn any entrenched notions that Baroque dance was slow, posy or pompous.

Shock treatment

EASILY the most provocative and important dance DVD released thus far in 2007 collects three acclaimed television films adapted from collaborative, iconoclastic stage productions by England’s DV8 Physical Theatre. Released by Arthaus Musik and available from Naxos of America at $29.99, the set weds startling imagery to intense studies of human behavior as reimagined by choreographer Lloyd Newson.

Early in DV8’s “Strange Fish” (1994; directed by David Hinton), you hear an aria sung by a half-naked, crucified female Christ, and the piece quickly develops into a harrowing look at a woman’s desperate need for love. The initial shock in “Enter Achilles” (1997; directed by Clara van Gool) comes from a love duet for a man in his underpants and a life-size inflatable sex doll. Working-class machismo goes under the knife here, much as the equally radical “Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men” (1990; directed by Hinton) dissects destructive drives in the homosexual community, depicting a serial murderer as the ultimate queer trick.

Newson gives the filmmakers enormous power to make changes and, especially, to have the dancing emerge from elaborate realistic environments. The ending of this “Enter Achilles,” for instance, is radically different from the way the piece looked onstage at UCLA in 1997, though the feeling of brutal alpha-male burnout is the same. Newson uses a new slate of performers for each project, but Nigel Charnock and Jordi Cortes Molina turn up prominently in two of the films, and future choreographer Russell Maliphant dances alongside Newson and the others as a monochrome man.

Passed from hand to hand in bootleg copies over the last decade, these are some of the most influential works in recent contemporary dance. It’s about time they were available aboveground.

lewis.segal@latimes.com

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Segal is The Times’ dance critic.