SMUIN BALLET (FROM WEEKEND IN N.Y.)

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on August 18, 2006.

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) — At the Joyce Theater in Chelsea, through tomorrow, the San Francisco-based Smuin Ballet entertains the summertime audience with veteran choreographer Michael Smuin’s showbiz flair.

The curtain raiser, “Bluegrass/Slyde,” to down-home music, is a cheery athletic piece with a gimmick. Its classically trained dancers romp through a jungle gym, swirling out from vertical poles planted on swiveling disks.

The recently created “Symphony of Psalms,” to Stravinsky’s choral score, aims for solemnity, if only to provide a balanced program.

Granted, the piece is sleekly and handsomely designed. But it hardly incarnates the single-minded fervor of the music. The ballet platitudes Smuin comes up with seem to be a poor means of expressing Old Testament passions.

“Fly Me to the Moon,” set to Sinatra songs, provides a deft choreographic equivalent of easy listening. Here Smuin is at his charming best.

Smuin has been around the block. He started out as a dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, where he began to choreograph. After doing time with American Ballet Theatre, he returned to SFB in 1973, directed that company for more than a decade, then formed his own group in 1994.

Along the way, he choreographed for Broadway and TV, won a Tony and an Emmy, and became very savvy about what makes the general public happy.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.