OAKLAND BALLET.

OAKLAND BALLET PARAMOUNT THEATRE OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA SEPTEMBER 24-26, 1999 REVIEWED BY RITA FELCIANO

Oakland Ballet's season opener, under the leadership of acting artistic director and principal dancer Joral Schmalle, proved once again that Oakland is not a great company--but it is a good one! Additionally, although the over-budget hole is always there, thank goodness, in thirty-four years it has yet to fall in.

Oakland's major strength is in the intelligence and breadth of its programming. It may be best known for its Nijinska and other Diaghilev-era ballets, but its commitment to commissioning local choreographers and its restaging of Americana pieces deserves equal applause. That commitment assures Oakland Ballet an audience wanting more than common fare. Both of these programming characteristics were nicely in evidence at Oakland's first fall concert.

When I looked at Alonzo King's Hovering Slightly Above Ground last year, I was unpleasantly taken aback by the work's central duo. Somehow the intricacies of what l felt was a long, rather maudlin pas de deux didn't seem to add up. Seeing it again now, as performed by Ben Barnhart and Jenna McClintock, all of a sudden the piece made more sense. The give and take of those angular contortions, him dragging her across the floor, and the built-in jerks and little quivers fall into a slowly moving trajectory.

In the last image, after a short ensemble interlude, McClintock was carried offstage spread-eagled over Barnhart's head. She looked like a floating cloud, or maybe like a corpse. The twelve dancers of OB took to King's familiar stalking-on-pointe and into-the-ground focus as it, like his own company, they never danced anything else.

Lew Christensen's 1942 Jinx, set in a circus in which a clown (Mario Alonzo) becomes a scapegoat and comes back to haunt his former colleagues, is an eerie little piece, exquisitely set to Benjamin Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. The storytelling is impeccable. The movement is almost minimalist, with spore but telling gestures, suggestions of horses prancing, trapeze artists balancing. Christensen even provides a funeral cortege, horses in front, grieving widow at the back. The most chilling moment was during a circling-the-wagon unison when he interspersed walking patterns with goose-steps. Michael Lowe, as the clown's friend, was particularly impressive.

For the lighthearted finale Oakland programmed Val Caniparoli's Djangology, set to the jazzy tunes of Django Reinhardt and his Quintette du Hot Club de France. An initially pleasant frou-frou of a work, it wore out its welcome rather too soon because Caniparoli, for all his fluid ability to assemble dance styles from A to Z into a tasty smorgasbord, didn't vary the ingredients enough.

I would have been happy just with Schmalle's solo, in which he breaks from a soft-shoe routine into tight pirouettes and rolls into a back somersault that leads him into grand jet, s. He then falls into a pushup position, to end up finally in a sloping walk that opens into strides and finally leaping turns. Schmalle performed this concoction with such easy grace that you couldn't help rooting for him and his sturdy colleagues who make up this Bay Area treasure.