DANCE REVIEW : Local Premiere of Tippet’s ‘Rigaudon’

Clark Tippet is a very clever choreographer, but in “Rigaudon,” his fourth work for American Ballet Theatre, he outsmarts himself.

In creating a playful showcase for 16 young ABT soloists and corps members, Tippet piled up so many ideas, styles and effects that he wrecked the best idea of all: using Benjamin Britten’s inventive and endearing “Simple Symphony for Strings.”

Introduced Thursday on the last mixed bill of Ballet Theatre’s current Shrine Auditorium season, “Rigaudon” evoked the pre-Romantic ballet in its title, its emphasis on formal, courtly group deployments and in Gary Lisz’s intricately layered and ornamented costumes.

Midway through the airy, architectural ensembles (set to what Britten called his “Boisterous Bourree”), John Gardner and Robert Wallace hoisted Deirdre Carberry between them--and soon those swains competed for her in vaguely Ashtonesque comic standoffs punctuated by bursts of bravura.

This overworked byplay--and the use of stomps, splits, lifts and leapfrogging--trampled underfoot the delicacy and elegance of Britten’s “Playful Pizzicato.” Tippet’s choices seemed not just arbitrary but an arrogant imposition, just as in the next section all the comings and goings he devised for two new threesomes (one led by Carld Jonassaint, the other by Julie Kent) shattered the flow of the moonstruck “Sarabande.”

Up to now, Tippet’s deft geometric gambits (the intersecting triangular formations in particular) nearly counterbalanced his excesses. But when Jonassaint and Kent got together, “Rigaudon” hit bottom with a monstrously appalling lift (later expanded into a group motif): the woman held stiffly upside down, head near the floor, feet together in the air, like a shovel. The ballet never recovered from this miscalculation.

On the same program, Mark Morris’ “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes” also suggested the joy and evanescence of youth--but without jokes or lapses of taste--while masterfully reflecting the shifting moods and rhythms of its accompaniment (piano etudes by Virgil Thomson).

Seen during the December ABT engagement in Costa Mesa, this quicksilver showpiece for 12 dancers initially provided glimpses of cast members crossing the stage and then developed these teasers into sensitively crafted movement statements that appeared to allow Martine van Hamel, Ethan Brown, Christine Dunham, Wes Chapman and others great latitude for personal expression.

Full of sweet surprises, it is one of those ballets that grows deeper and more luminous with every viewing.

Christian Lacroix’s “Gaite Parisienne,” a costume parade based very loosely on a ballet of the same name by Leonide Massine, completed the program. Charles Barker conducted “Rigaudon” expertly and Michael Boriskin was the capable pianist in “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes.”