Lyon Goes Beyond Ballet.

Lyon Opera Ballet Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Becket, Massachusetts July 17-21, 2002

The Lyon Opera Ballet's name describes the geography rather than the repertoire, identifying the company's home base at the Opera House in Lyon, France. Otherwise, like many contemporary European troupes, the company performs works commissioned from the international A-list of innovative choreographers, no matter their style. To be sure, the dancers manage ballet technique well, as noted in the friezelike bourrees on pointe of the silhouetted ballerinas in Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard's take on Maurice Ravel's Bolero (1998), currently in the repertoire. However, Artistic Director Yorgos Loukos prefers a wider arch to the rainbow of movement challenges for his dancers.

At Jacob's Pillow, the troupe's program included references to the dance and ritual of the Aborigines in Jiri Kylian's Stamping Ground (1983); a segue into contact improvisation that incorporated suggestions of Brazilian capoeira to show off the athletic skills of the two men in Russell Maliphant's Critical Mass (1998); plus the off-kilter balletic setting of Kylian's Un Ballo (1991).

Due to the vagaries of the Berkshires' weather, complete with a violent electric storm outside the Ted Shawn Theatre on July 18, Bolero was cancelled as the finale because of the numerous lighting cues required for the multimedia effects. (I later saw the work on videotape.) The sets and special effects for a new piece by John Jasperse, originally announced for the Pillow engagement, proved too large for the Ted Shawn stage.

Stamping Ground is a work for six dancers who make their own music for most of its twenty minutes by thumping on the ground with their feet and slapping various parts of their bodies, although the final segment is accompanied by Carlos Chavez's Toccata para instrumentos de percussion. The movement vocabulary is limited and repeated, ranging from a jellyfish-like scuttling through space to a pelvic shudder that animates first one, then another, of the bodies as they cross the stage. Overall, the choreography is enhanced by images of animals roaming in the wild: The isolation of the dancers' body parts call to mind the gestures and attitudes of the various creatures. There's also a nod to a circus format when the performers burst onstage through and disappear behind a backdrop of ribbonlike black strips.

Critical Mass is a duet for men who move fluidly through a languid series of erotic partnerings, molded in shimmering lights and shadows designed by Michael Hulls. The two men--Benoit Causse and Michael Pomero (also performed by Davy Brun and Jeremie Perroud)--are gorgeous dancers of strength and sensitivity, who know the importance of sharing their weight. Maliphant has concocted imaginative lifts for them; one partner hoists the other on one hip or across the shoulders, or balances him on legs spread in a wide second position. The final segment of cartwheels and somersaults, performed to the Latin rhythms by Richard English (with additions from and by Andy Cowton), added a change of pace to the long piece. Un Ballo, set to Ravel's "Menuet" from Le Tombeau de Couperin and his Pavane pour une infante defunte was the most clearly balletic work, filled with pirouettes and petite batterie for five couples, who nonetheless wind up in odd resting places. What was best about the evening was the sense of surprise as each work began and the pleasure of watching such expert dancers.