25 AUGUST 2001, Page 41

White Oak Dance Project (Playhouse, Edinburgh)

San Francisco Ballet (Royal Opera House)

Acclaimed creations

thannandrea Pomo

Those who think that the experimental, iconoclastic, 'anti-everything' dance created in the 1960s by a group of North American dance makers has, 40 years on, lost its appeal and exceeded its sell-by date, should go and see PASTFonvard, White Oak Dance Project's new programme. Cleverly conceived in the form of a filmed documentary that links and introduces each of the 16 dances, the show isn't impregnated with sugary nostalgia. Neither does it indulge in a complacent and somewhat pompously celebratory look at a significant moment of dance history. PASTForward is, on the contrary. a lively and vibrant informal celebration of that genre controversially referred to as 'post-modern dance', which demonstrates how the work of the Judson Church group — named after the Greenwich Village venue in which they performed — still has a lot to say.

In Edinburgh, viewers were first greeted in the theatre's foyer by community performers engaging in Huddle, a 1961 'sculpture in space' by Simone Forti, the sole choreographer on the programme who did not belong to the Judson group, but who worked extensively with the other postmodernists and contributed greatly to the development of the genre. As Mikhail Baryshnikov — White Oak Dance Project's leading figure — told the audience at the beginning of the documentary that keeps the whole evening together, the achievements of the Judson group have long been unknown to many outside the United States and are still overlooked by some within the dance world. Yet their cultural and artistic impact has been unique and has had reverberations all over the world.

Hence this programme, in which the pioneers of post-modern dance have been invited by Baryshnikov to recreate some of their most successful and representative works. Not all the pieces are breathtakingly fresh or still abrasively provocative, however. But the overall quality of the evening leaves few doubts about the well-thoughtout selection of the programme. Lucinda Childs's Carnation. Trisha Brown's Homemade, Steve Paxton's Flat, Yvonne Rainer's Talking Solo and David Gordon's Overture to The Matter provide the viewer with a stimulating and exhaustive view of the key aspects and features of choreographic postmodernism, showing also how many of today's acclaimed creations owe to those formulae. This is more than just a beautiful, entertaining programme. It is dance culture at its best, served with humour, sensibility and intelligence.

Meanwhile, in London, the San Francisco Ballet has concluded what has been a pleasantly long, rich and varied ballet season at the Royal Opera House. Those who enjoyed any of the three programmes presented last week have certainly had a chance to admire the artistic eclecticism of the company as well as the intriguing richness of its repertoire. Indeed, it was a pleasure to rediscover classics of the American ballet tradition, such as George Balanchine's Bugaku and Jerome Robbin's Fanfare. In a typical Balanchinian way, the former mixes subtle irony with references to a ballet tradition, namely the Russian one, with which the choreographer was fully familiar; the exotic content of the ballet has been read as a tribute to The Mikado's Daughter, a long-forgotten title of the Russian imperial repertoire. Set to Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, the latter is a tongue-in-cheek yet refined diversion that only a genius like Jerome Robbins could come up with.

Among the more recent creations, Yuri Possokhov's Magrittomania scored a great success the night I went. Personally, I found it to be a hotch-potch of undeveloped ideas set to an irrilating score that aims only at butchering some of Beethoven's best-known pieces. Fortunately, the same programme gave us a chance to see A Garden, created for the company by Mark Morris, a truly engaging bit of choreography. I only wish it had been danced better, for it requires a lightness that none of the dancers seemed to possess. Still, a less than perfect technique was the unfortunate common denominator of the two performances I attended. Some bodies did not look right either, and I would like to remind whoever is in charge that ballet, with all its aesthetic predicaments, is not a politically correct art form and cannot accommodate love handles, particularly in neo-classical works such as Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements.