DANCE REVIEW : Ballet Pacifica Takes Some Risks in Opener

Ballet Pacifica opened its 29th season boldly with a risk-taking program of works by four younger, living, little-known American choreographers Friday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

You can applaud artist director Molly Lynch’s audacious vision (will conservative Orange County audiences support such work?) without overlooking the major problems that still exist in the pre-professional Laguna Beach-based company.

In fact, one way of looking at what was on view at Cheng Hall was how the various choreographers dealt with technical limitations of dancers.

For instance, Philip Jerry’s “Our Town,” receiving its West Coast premiere, succeeded poignantly not just because it is based on Thornton Wilder’s touching play and buoyed by a compilation of wonderful Copland scores, but because it required the company much of the time to look not like dancers but simply like people or the characters in the play.

The 36-year-old Jerry’s choreographic indebtedness to Agnes de Mille was obvious but respectful. (In a post-performance chat with the audience, the ex-Joffrey Ballet principal dancer cited De Mille and Kurt Jooss as his chief influences.)

In his version, the action sometimes turned hyperactive, but characters were deftly defined gesturally. The opening exploding circular formations with waves of dancers passing through one another created an image of community and succession of generations. Eloisa Enerio danced Emily with pert vulnerability. David Lawrence was supportive as George.

In her new “Remote Relationships,” created for the company, Diane Coburn Bruning abandoned ballet vocabulary and asked three dancers (Gillian Finley, Paula Hoffner and Janine Paulsen) to hop, jump, skip, turn and walk--sparingly at that--to beguiling traditional Scottish folk songs.

Colin Connor’s “Variations and Fugue” (created during the summer at the Ballet Pacifica Choreographic Project) singled out one dancer (Kitty Sue McCoy) for extensions and balances, while eight other company members walked or ran or pantomimed slow-motion fights behind her.

Connor’s stop-and-start work--set to crowd rally noises and excerpts from a Vivaldi string sinfonia--evoked contrasts between present and past, reality and memory, and the sublime structure of art versus the chaotic dangers of life. Its snapshots of emerging fascism caused alarm.

Rick McCullough’s 1989 three-part pas de deux (set to Rachmaninoff Preludes) required the most traditional ballet technique and thus forced recognition of Paulsen’s hard work but broken line and Lee Wigand’s labored partnering and halting solo work.