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Tomasson’s Blue Rose, premiered last year, affords some tea-dancing type solos and pas de deux for six dancers. Performing before a pianist and a violinist, here Natal’ya Feygina and Roy Malan, were principal dancers Tina LeBlanc, Lorena Feijoo, Vanessa Zahorian, bare-shouldered in romantic tutu length semi-party dresses with the Gallic trio Nicolas Blanc, Pascal Molat and Pierre-Francois Vilanoba in dark, open- necked shirts and trousers, all in front of an Art Deco type curtain of black with burnt orange curlicues. Except for their sheen and technical polish, the feeling was working-folk recreation.

Tomasson’s choice of Elena Kats-Cherin’s medley of tangos, waltzes and faint echoes of New Orleans ragtime has drawn exasperated comments from critics and observers. Kats-Cherin lives in Australia but was born in Uzbekistan and composed “Russian Rag” in 1996 from which the pieces are drawn.

The music comments on the originals, evidence of international spread of the forms. Minted Argentine tango Kats-Cherin’s music is not. What is intriguing is this evidence of tango's far flung influence, since I learned recently how pervasive a form tango became in Eastern Europe amongst the Jewish population, flavored with klezmer and Slavic melancholy. It makes for a tea steeped in the samovar.

Blue Rose reflects some of that foreign inflection with LeBlanc and Zahorian the only American members of the six. Tomasson plays down the alien ambience, but Feijoo and the three men exude enough to make the cross-over apparent. Each set of couples get a pas de deux, Molat rates a tango-based solo, Blanc and Vilanoba do a brother act where Blanc’s crisp multiple pirouettes one up good-natured Vilanoba. Feijoo swirls and preens, Tina twirls and swirls, all pleasant if not major.

The hardest part of David Bintley’s The Dance House for me are the women’s costumes with a broad red stripe and an equally wide black band down the front to the crotch of the faintly glistening tunics with wispy traces at the hips, the men. Tiit Helimets and Gennadi Nedviguin, are in modified sweats with large cut outs at the chest exposing the sternum and part of the pectorals. Gonzalo Garcia is garbed like a scruffy, angry ragamuffin with hues of red, blue and black, hair semi-Afro frizz.

Set to a Shastakovich piano concerto, a red ballet barre stretches the width of back stage before faint dribbled outlines of a house. The complicated runs, played by Michael McGraw with his usual panache, provide the impetus for complicated expositions by Tina LeBlanc and, at the end,Kristin Long. Garcia enters and stalks Le Blanc, then partners her a la LeClerq-Moncion in La Valse. Garcia also dances his own variation. He circles Rachel Viselli and Tiit Helimets rather than separating them, but does interrupt the partnering of Long and Nedviguin. The supporting dancers scatter like disturbed pigeons in both instances.

Everything, save Viselli with one leg scarlet and Helimets, trips along, allegro style. Created in 1995, the AIDs epidemic was still major news and everyone was aware why the principals fall to the floor at the conclusion. Garcia’s role, created by Anthony Randazzo, represents a departure in casting for the company’s Spanish-born wunderkind. Not often assigned to menace fellow dancers, Garcia’s execution implies he’s ready for depth and shadow in his assignments.

Yuri Possokhov’s interpretation of Firebird, an expanded version of what he earlier created for Oregon Ballet Theater, completed the evening. Except for Sandra Woodall’s costume for the princess, Rachel Viselli, the production is a lovely reinforcement for Possokhov’s reading; this folktale, deeply imbedded in Russian culture, experiences a genuine visual trope.
 

Instead of making castles and walls, Tsars and Tsarinas, Possokhov goes to the village. The Prince is rendered as nice but slow-minded hero as is the giggling Princess. The Firebird wears a flame colored body suit with glitter on the tunic, an orange-hued wig and flaming red tail which miraculously fails to impede movement. Helimets as the Prince is quite good with Russian mannerisms and Yuan Yuan Tan glints and soars in the title role. Viselli is the adolescent girl next door, minus cell phone, with her clutch of friends. Pascal Molat as Kaschei is given a Halloween skeletal torso against grey tights, long fingers,a wonderful crouching posture along with leaps, tours and the inevitable menace. He emerges and submerges in his circle of minions in wonderful lighting by David Finn with the imaginative metallic linear suggestions of Russian architecture and trees in Yuri Zhukov’s scenic designs, all winning evidence of abundant talent.

Posskhov’s version has the Prince imprisoned in a circular-stranded red tube dropped from the flys and a real encounter between the Firebird and Kaschei, the bird’s superior spirit divesting the demon of his egg which she tosses to the Prince. The slow motion pursuit of the Prince by Kaschei is an inspired bit of stuck celluloid film, the movement hiccoughing before the Prince drops the egg, there is a flash then quick blackout.

After the beguiling Berceuse where the Prince interweaves himself between the Firebird and the Princess only to carry the latter off evoking tears from the drooping bird,the finale village folk stride in Russian folk dance forms, repeatedly, led by the Prince and Princess. It is the village united and rejoicing, devoid of Soviet-style messages, still clearly a collective impulse. With this infusion of the former Ballet Russe spirit, I can only exclaim "More, please, Yuri Possokhov, more, and soon!"