Spring Festival of Dance: Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, March 4-15, 1998; Ballet Chicago, April 1-5, 1998; Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago, April 7-10, 1998; Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, April 14-May 3, 1998, Auditorium Theatre, Chicago.

SPRING FESTIVAL OF DANCE JOFFREY BALLET OF CHICAGO, MARCH 4-15, 1998 BALLET CHICAGO, APRIL 1-5, 1998 MUNTU DANCE THEATRE OF CHICAGO, APRIL 7-10, 1998 HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO, APRIL 14-MAY 3, 1998 AUDITORIUM THEATRE, CHICAGO REVIEWED BY LAURA MOLZAHN

Chicago has become the land of festivals. In the fall we've got the six-week Dance Chicago fest, in the summer the two-week Chicago Human Rhythm Project, and in the late winter the Next Dance festival and the Ruth Page series. All are devoted to or include plenty of Chicago talent. But the granddaddy of Windy City celebrations is the twelve-year-old Spring Festival of Dance, which this year featured four Chicago troupes, several others from Europe, and such national stars as Garth Fagan, Bill T. Jones, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Such festivals suggest a healthy local dance community and an admirable willingness to collaborate rather than compete. That's only part of the picture, however. Comparisons may be odious, but in a festival they're inevitable, and the Spring Festival's high profile ensures that any lack of professionalism--perhaps a problem inherent in such events, which are inclusive by nature--will be glaring.

By far the most ambitious, varied, and entertaining programs came from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. Although the troupe experienced something of a choreographic slump after the Tharp Project ended a few years ago, it came back strong this season with two company premieres of European imports. Jiri Kylian's 1986 Sechs Tanze ("Six Dances") was the perfect vehicle for Hubbard Street, whose dancers have honed their comic skills in David Parsons's The Envelope and the comic sections of Twyla Tharp's Baker's Dozen and Nine Sinatra Songs. Three different eight-member casts proved the company's range and consistency in this deceptively facile piece: an antic crowd pleaser set to Mozart with men in powdered wigs and women with frizzed-out hair, it required exceptional timing and strength.

Nacho Duato's Jardi Tancat ("Enclosed Garden") was something of a departure for Hubbard Street: rather than slipping by pleasantly, this dance gathered emotion as it went. Modern in appearance, it alluded to the story of Adam and Eve, setting it in an earthy, peasant environment, capping evocations of labor and sorrow with three buoyant, transcendent duets that suggested the fortunate Fall. Sophisticated musically and emotionally, it made a third new piece--Link, by former Hubbard Street dancer Mario Alberto Zambrano--look ordinary, though the trio hinted at his promise.

Ballet Chicago's Coppelia was slight but solid, as artistic director Daniel Duell set modest goals and met them admirably. In the performance I saw, Nichol Hlinka and Damian Woetzel of New York City Ballet starred as Swanilda and Franz; Hlinka gave her character unusual piquancy, especially in the first and second acts, while Woetzel showed his exceptional physical daring and grace. Longtime Ballet Chicago associate Gordon Peirce Schmidt played Dr. Coppelius with endearing awkwardness and humor, and some fifty young dancers--twenty-four of whom were members of the budding Ballet Chicago Youth Company, trained in the troupe's burgeoning school--supplied energy and charm, especially in the workshop scene. Spanking-new costumes and set, borrowed from Richmond Ballet, set off this earnest, pleasing production, seemingly designed to nurture Chicago's young ballet talent and audience.

One of the Spring Festival's disappointments was the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, which made a splash here two years earlier but this season seemed to have settled into a puddle. The problem was not so much the dancing, which ranged from excellent to adequate, but the repertory. Though artistic director Gerald Arpino's 1965 Viva Vivaldi and Alonzo King's 1991 Cante, an intriguing combination of flamenco and classical dance, held up well, too many other works seemed dated, derivative, or gimmicky. Why revive Arpino's 1977 Touch Me, a male solo set to live gospel music, a clear Ailey rip-off? Why dance Pilobolus's murky, silly 1975 Untitled, with women in long skirts perched on men's shoulders, yet again?

More recent pieces were no better. Mehmet Sander's 1992 trio Inner Space, set in an acrylic box, wasn't dance at all but an acrobatic one-trick pony; and Peter Pucci's 1992 male quartet, Moon of the Falling Leaves, was a pale, stale rendition of Native American dance and culture. Even Kurt Jooss's 1932 antiwar classic, The Green Table, seemed out of touch with centemporary life. There was a reason for the Joffrey to revive the dance in 1967, when the Vietnam War controversy was raging, but this year it's been overexposed--a relic of the company's reconstructionist heyday--when we might rather have seen Nijinsky or early Balanchine.

Muntu Dance Theatre's Fat Tuesday & All That Jazz was ambitious and colorful but not perhaps of the caliber one expects to see on the Auditorium stage. An overlong tale of love and voodoo, it showcased many dance genres, from African to jazz to modern to tap, and lots of live musicians, from blues harmonica player Billy Branch to the ten-piece Olympia Brass Band to the Muntu drummers. A segue from Africa to New Orleans in the middle of the first act brilliantly connected that culture with its modern urban descendant. But the costumes and set were more professional than the dancing, which had a quality that ranged widely. The troupe shows an honorable commitment to its dancers, many of whom have been there for years, but it could use some fresh, young blood. And the performers simply haven't been trained well enough in the many styles of dance that Fat Tuesday requires.