MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : JOFFREY DANCES ASHTON PROGRAM

An Ashton evening is one among several specialties of the Joffrey Ballet, and its current season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion happily features one such. While nothing unfamiliar turned up on the Thursday agenda, “Illuminations,” seen here in alternate years since 1983, easily counts as the most remarkable offering.

A poetic phantasmagoria, the 37-year-old work still stands as a hallmark of artistic collaboration. Rimbaud’s febrile visions, in which a doomed hero sees society as a “savage sideshow,” provide the narrative impetus. Britten’s nocturnal setting with its glistening dissonances and tenorial outpourings and Cecil Beaton’s decor, a pastiche of surreal reverie, are grist for Sir Frederick’s theatrical choreography, which bleeds in the mind’s eye.

The present incarnation was brilliantly carried off. Except for Charlene Gehm as Sacred Love (replacing the departed Patricia Miller) the cast remains the same. Gehm may miss a degree of otherworldly wonder but projects her own brand of goddess-like mystery.

If anything, Glenn Edgerton’s Poet has amplified in anti-heroic anguish--his whole body seethes with it--and Beatriz Rodriguez, the sultry, sinewy Profane Love, still has the wanton character deep in her flexed muscles.

For the rest of this fragmented dream ballet--one in which Pierrots and clowns parade lightly in and out of view, shuddering and praying like emblems of a Fellini movie--no moment failed to capture the imagination. Allan Lewis led the orchestra with sensitivity and Grayson Hirst sang with affecting ardor.

“Monotones I and II,” that sleek, little geometrically faceted jewel set to music by Satie, shone especially, thanks to Elizabeth Parkinson, whose textbook turnout and long, perfect legs made the choreography super-legible. But “Les Patineurs,” which completed the program, could stand to be retired after such long service; certainly Mark Goldweber, as the boy in blue, has seen better days.