Sarah Wildor Conveys Rich Inner Life in ‘Ravel Evening’

Dancers who convey a rich inner life are as fascinating as they are rare--and the recast Royal Ballet “Ravel Evening” offered a prime example in Sarah Wildor, Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Dancing one of the unnamed leads in Kenneth MacMillan’s “La Fin du Jour,” she matched her scrupulous attention to the choreographic text with an ability to put her signature on the role: subtle, mysterious, shaped from within.

You could think of this quality as something like a perfume--evanescent yet unmistakable--and definitely not the same thing as acting. On Friday, Miyako Yoshida certainly acted the Margot Fonteyn role in Frederick Ashton’s “Daphnis and Chloe” capably enough, looking especially impressive in her intense pleading solo when captured by pirates. But she never seemed to reveal her whole being through dance as Wildor did in the same assignment the previous evening.

For much of the ballet, Bruce Sansom played Daphnis like a prince in disguise, but he expressed conflicting emotions plausibly in the seduction by Lykanion (an impressively sardonic Genesia Rosato) and loosened up in the role toward the end. William Trevitt made a dangerously attractive rival, Gary Avis an insufficiently menacing pirate chief.

Without the star dancers seen Thursday, Christopher Wheeldon’s “Pavane pour une infante defunte” looked awfully threadbare even as a showpiece. Inaki Urlezaga soloed acceptably but roughly met some of his partnering challenges. As his elusive object of worship, Chloe Davies executed her steps neatly but emphasized the rapt, interior focus that can transcend even the most mundane choreography and make the dancer infinitely more memorable than the dance.