DIAGHILEV BALLETS GET GLAM, MODERN LOOK BY BIGONZETTI AT BAM

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on November 10, 2005.

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Mauro Bigonzetti, the intrepid Italian choreographer who heads the Reggio Emilia-based Compagnia Aterballetto, has re-imagined two ballets central to the classical-dance canon for his troupe. Both can be seen in a double-barreled program that runs through Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Created for Serge Diaghilev's legendary Ballets Russes, both Bronislava Nijinska's ``Les Noces'' and Michel Fokine's ``Petrushka'' are set to scores by Igor Stravinsky. This composer was, of course, the giant among providers of ballet music in the 20th century, as Tchaikovsky was in the 19th.

Bigonzetti is a somewhat smaller talent, judging by these two 2002 dances.

Stravinsky worked on ``Les Noces'' -- a vibrant dramatic cantata for chorus, four solo singers, four pianos and a slew of other percussion instruments -- throughout World War I, completing the score only in 1918.

Nijinska staged it in 1923, carrying out the composer's evocation of the rites -- first solemn, then raucous, always emotionally rending -- surrounding an arranged marriage in a peasant community. Hers is still considered the definitive production, though other choreographers subsequently tackled the score, Jerome Robbins most successfully in 1965. (He called the music ``barbaric, beautiful, and frightening.'')

Nijinska's brutally stark, strong choreography, a clarion call to modernism, remains astonishing even today. Its intricate visual patterning is an effective complement to the complex, ferocious rhythms of the music.

Sex, Menace

``Les Noces,'' Bigonzetti-style, opts for surface gorgeousness. Gleaming bare-bones furniture and stunning black- and-white costumes set off angular, spectacularly athletic movement relentlessly executed at fever pitch. It's the familiar equation, rooted in fashion glossies -- of sex and menace, rendered glamorously.

The men and women of this very contemporary community confront each other as if the two genders were, by definition, enemies and intercourse invariably a rape. The tension and aggression are relieved only by creepiness.

Duly referring to Nijinska's scenario, there's a bride and groom, and an experienced pair of bed warmers to encourage them. But Bigonzetti gives us a run-up and a wedding night destined to rehabilitate virginity as a viable alternative.

Pathetic Clown

Michel Fokine created his memorable ``Petrushka'' to Stravinsky's score in 1911. It has been a staple of the international classical-dance repertory ever since.

Amid the color and bustle of a fairground in Old Russia, a Charlatan presents his theater of life-size puppets. They are stock types: a vain, empty-headed Ballerina; a ``primitive'' Blackamoor (stupid, sensuous and inclined to violence); and Petrushka, a pathetic clown.

A close-up view of the puppets backstage reveals that these rag-and-sawdust figures have a life of their own. What's more, Petrushka -- aspiring to the dancing girl's love, perpetually abused by his master and finally struck down by his scimitar- wielding rival --turns out to have a soul.

The title role of the piece, first danced by Vaslav Nijinsky, has been called a dancer's ``Hamlet.''

Metaphor

Bigonzetti's response to the original is both superficial and well-nigh unfathomable. Apart from a few too-pointed references, he junks Fokine's scenario, concocting his own tale of a divine-fool sort of guy who robs a clothing store, gets caught by guards immune to the Geneva Conventions, then lured by a loose-jointed fashion mannequin whose suave boyfriend violently objects.

The program notes, naturally, claim all this to be a metaphor for something or other. You'd never guess that from the hyperactive nonsense happening on stage. Stravinsky's rich score gets co-opted to provide atmosphere, movie-music style, and a rhythmic base for the gymnastic gyrations that the choreographer marries to the classical vocabulary by sheer force.

© 2005 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.