White Oak Dance Project.

BAM OPERA HOUSE MARCH 25-29, 1997

Although the White Oak Dance Project has been around for some years now, its artistic identity remains as indistinct as ever. There is no core repertory, only unrelated works that come and go, even when they happen to be distinguished. And, apart from Mikhail Baryshnikov, the former ballet superstar who is the company's chief drawing card, there is no permanent corps of dancers. Baryshnikov's attitude toward the enterprise is curiously diffident. White Oak is his brainchild, managed by his production company, and it features him in every performance. Yet nowhere does he--or anybody else, for that matter acknowledge a role in the artistic direction. Listed in alphabetical order on the program, he appears as just one of the dancers.

What happens onstage, of course, is another story. White Oak specializes in two sorts of dances--solos for Baryshnikov and group works--with the odd historical rarity for high-profile seasons. Featured this year at the Brooklyn Academy of Music were Dana Reitz's 1995 solo, Unspoken Territory, Merce Cunningham's 1953 Septet, and premieres by Meg Stuart (Remote) and the late Erick Hawkins (Journey of a Poet). Barely enough to fill two programs, all except Septet were tedious and disappointing.

Created as a solo for Baryshnikov, Journey of a Poet goes nowhere. People wriggle, drop to the floor, roll, get up, leave, come back, often under his cheerless gaze. At the end, he does a couple of leaps one way and a long crawl the other, recalling Prodigal Son. Were these really in the notes Hawkins left or were they added by Baryshnikov when expanding the piece for White Oak? Although the score by Lucia Dlugoszewski has flashes of wit, they are echoed neither in the choreography nor in the unisex costuming--black camisole leotards that flatter the women but feminize the men.

Unspoken Territory also plays around with androgyny. Wearing a short-skirted tunic (by Santo Loquasto) of the kind Nijinsky donned in ballets like Narcisse, Baryshnikov impersonates such fin-desiecle images as Pavlova's dying swan, Nijinsky's rose-petaled specter, and, especially, his angle-armed faun. Although Baryshnikov never descends to camp, there is something faintly disturbing about his knowing ephebe. At the same time, his presence is never less than arresting, charismatic even in stillness. And, in the shower of Jennifer Tipton's golden light, it radiates youth.

Remote is even less successful, although it, too, has a strong visual component, in this case Bruce Mau's projections of abstract images and cityscapes, which introduce the main sections. Although interesting in themselves, these black-and-white images have no discernible connection with the choreography or with Andre Lepecki's "dramaturgy notes," which mostly take issue with T.S. Eliot instead of elucidating what the piece is about. The best section comes in the middle and features three of White Oak's excellent women, Raquel Aedo, waiflike Emmanuele Phuon, and Ruthlyn Salomons, whose every movement is a study in harmony.

They and the company's other first-rate dancers--Jamie Bishton, Sarah Perron, David Porter, Vernon Scott, and Greg Zuccolo--make White Oak worth seeing, not its haphazardly assembled repertory. Of the works presented this season only Cunningham's witty, eververnal Septet, with its echoes of Balanchine's Apollo and tantalizing hints of Four Temperaments, was worthy of its performers, Baryshnikov included. After nearly a half-dozen years of existence, White Oak remains a vanity enterprise in search of artistic direction.

White Oak Dance Project performs more often outside New York City than it does in Gotham. Our Los Angeles correspondent had the Following reaction.