JULIO BOCCA AND BALLET ARGENTINO.

JULIO BOCCA AND BALLET ARGENTINO CITY CENTER SEPTEMBER 16-20, 1998

Following the likes of Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, Argentinean ballet star Julio Bocca puts his name above that of the company he leads on tour. Unlike the supporting groups led by those big-name male dancers, however, Bocca's is not a pick-up company. Ballet Argentino is an ongoing troupe in the early stages of what is intended to be a permanent organization.

Time and circumstance will, of course, help decide just how permanent. On the strength of the company's weeklong local season, any predictions on the venture's staying power, at least as far as U.S. tours might be concerned, must be guarded.

First the good news. Bocca himself, who was cast prominently in three of his program's four offerings, is in very fine shape, looking, perhaps, better than ever. He even seems to have grown a little in actual physical height. His lean, well-toned physique had the air and eye-filling quality of a classical Greek athlete's, one whose healthy and sculpted body had been scraped clean of all excess.

The less-than-good news is the repertory. For a young man who reportedly resisted the fresh experimentations of both Mark Morris and Twyla Tharp during the years he spent with American Ballet Theatre under Baryshnikov, Bocca now reveals a skewed sense of the classical heritage he supposedly honored in his lack of enthusiasm for the contemporary classicism of both choreographers.

Only one of his program's ballets offered a chance for his company's women to work on pointe. This was a dubiously put together staging of Roland Petit's Le Jeune Homme et la Mort ("The Young Man and Death"). Vague approximations of the original Wakhevitch and Berard design scheme made the period-piece affair look extra thin, which was unfortunate since Bocca performed the title role with intense plastic richness and powerful dramatic commitment Neither company woman (Natalia Magnicaballi and Rosana Perez) I saw had the dramatic dimension necessary for the role of mistress/death.

Of the other three offerings only Concertango, Ana Maria Stekelman's tango number, made much impact. Handsomely costumed in midnight blacks and blues, it passed its time agreeably. Meanwhile, Alejandro Cervera's Cautivos ("Captives") proved to be little more than a post-French-modern-dance exercise for unbecomingly costumed women and casually attired men in what could be an anxiety-ridden Gap commercial. Mauricio Wainrot's Desde Lejos ("From a Distance") seemed to have a Paul Taylor dance on its mind. Dressed in another undistinguished set of casual clothes, the ensemble work, led by Bocca and Luciana Paris, told us little that was memorable about this young company and its leader, whose well-documented fervor to show the world some of Argentina's finest ballet talents remains more evident in the interviews he gives than in the programming he oversees.