TAME DANCES, WILD ‘RITE’ : NEW DIVERSIONS AND AN OLD ORGY FROM MAURICE BEJART

Maurice Bejart may not be the deepest of thinkers--even though many of his ballets profess to explore profound subjects. His may not be the most original of choreographic minds--even though he shows no fear when it comes to appropriating and approximating all that can be trendy, raunchy, irreverent and, perhaps, irrelevant.

It is easy to dismiss his Ballet of the 20th Century as the world’s leading, most glamorous, best trained and most forceful exponent of effete show-biz ballet. But Bejart fools you.

Just when you think it is safe to stay away and do something really important, like watch Lacey and Hutch on the tube, Bejart comes up with something reasonably compelling. He confounds the would-be pigeonholers.

He confounded them Wednesday night at Royce Hall, UCLA, with a bill that contained two recent, mild-mannered, retrogressive exercises plus a flamboyant golden-oldie: the mechanically exciting “Sacre du Printemps” of 1959.

“Seven Greek Dances,” which received its U.S. premiere in New York in 1983, reveals Bejart in his harmless, folksy, back-to-nature posture. The suite begins and ends with the entire ensemble--aggressively accessible men who dominate chaste but seldom chased women--wafting back and forth in place on a shadowy stage, to the ebb and flow of taped surf noises.

Soon the abstract beach becomes an abstract taverna and, with the jiggly-twangy-bouncy music of Theodorakis serving as a resistible impetus, the beautiful gang starts to dance, dance, dance.

Gil Roman and Serge Campardon join arms in a manly duet that starts out looking macho -ethnic and ends up looking friendly-balletic. Before the exercises run their innocent course--and they don’t run very quickly--we have lusty yet prissy maneuvers by the male corps, demure maneuvers by the tripping and traipsing female corps, a coy but witty little duet for Yann le Gac and Kyra Kharkevitch, a potentially erotic duet for Ronald Perry and Nathalie Carratie accompanied ambiguously by six fleetly competitive, muscular gentlemen, and the inevitable send-’em-off cheering solo for an erotic acrobat.

In this case the erotic acrobatic, and a good one, is Michel Gascard.

The Greek dances, always at least mildly amusing, offer a well-crafted fusion of the casual and the formal. They strain no one. They offend only those who might prefer to leave this sort of indulgence to Zorba, Aman, Melina Mercouri and the Corfu Chamber of Commerce.

At first, Bejart’s “Concerto in Re” (Concerto in D major) delivers a shock. Created in 1982, it utilizes the same Stravinsky music that Balanchine used in “Balustrade” (1941) and again, more significantly, in “Violin Concerto” (1972). Bejart’s choreography, moreover, leans heavily and consciously on the neo-classic Balanchine aesthetic.

But “Concerto in Re” is no Balanchine ballet. It is, for better or worse (probably worse), a restrained Bejart ballet with a distinct Balanchine accent.

As such, it exerts a certain whimsical charm. It is neat, pretty, sometimes even funny. It mocks certain conventions gently: At one point, the courtly gentlemen kiss the ladies’ hands; instantly the ladies return the favor. Bejart enjoys gender role-reversals even here.

Essentially, this is a cute, clever, nervous ballet in which elegant rituals teeter on the brink of hysteria. It also is a welcome vehicle for Shonach Mirk, whose brilliant technique and quiet charm compel admiration--and sympathy at the end, when Bejart has his quasi-cavalier drop the ballerina and run away.

Ultimately, “Symphony in Re” fails to exorcise one crucial, vexing, paradoxical suspicion: If you take away Bejart’s gimmickry and gutsy energy, you probably take away his most interesting, if not most admirable, qualities.

“Le Sacre du Printemps,” which once again drew screams and whoops of approval as the curtain fell, remains the ultimate mating ritual. Ignoring Stravinsky’s libretto, Bejart ends the ballet not with sacrificial death but with something that looks for all the world like sacrificial heterosexual union.

The inflamed chorus of primitives--apelike men and birdlike women--stalk the chosen man and woman, encircle them, goad them on and finally force them to succumb to the stylized ecstasy of the ultimate embrace.

Although Bejart does not invariably respect the dynamics and the nuances of the score, he certainly savors the compulsive rhythms. And he knows how to create orgiastic violence with neat movement patterns and primitive unison gestures, not to mention silent screams.

His “Rite” is a tough, bludgeon-the-senses, theatrical ballet. It may look a bit dated in the mod and cheeky era of Paul Taylor and Pina Bausch, but it certainly has the courage of its own tawdry convictions.

And it is danced superbly--twitch for twitch and lunge for lunge--by Philippe Lizon as the confused yet passionate chosen man and by Sophie Baule as his otherworldly yet ultimately compliant mate. The supporting pagans seemed a little tired and edgy on this occasion.

UCLA, incidentally, allowed the taped music to deafen the audience once again. The management provided no annotations and hardly any identification of the music and musicians involved. The program magazine did offer an embarrassingly gushy pre-review of the Bejart repertory, however, by a New York cheerleader masquerading as a dance critic.