DANCE REVIEW : Ukrainian State Troupe Opens at Pantages

With a genial, arm-in-arm stroll toward the footlights, a proud cry of “We Are Ukrainian!” and the traditional offering of bread and salt, the dancers of Pavlo Virsky’s Ukrainian State Dance Company greeted the audience in the Pantages Theatre on Tuesday, the first night of a seven-performance run.

Few of the remarkably young, slender and attractive dancers could have participated in the last Virsky tour of the United States 15 years ago, but no matter. Treating Americans like old friends wasn’t merely the opening gambit in the 14-part program. It became virtually a leitmotif, with disarming expressions of warmth, graciousness and humor continually undercutting the formality of the kaleidoscopic groupings and the hard-edged display dancing.

In its wholehearted dedication to folk culture, the Virsky evening stood for everything the last Moiseyev tour should have been but wasn’t. There were celebrations of work and the defense of the homeland: women as living looms, men as human fortresses. There were also demonstrations of dance as a social activity and dance as a revelation of individual prowess.

Although Virsky died in 1979, the extraordinary blend of virtuosity and intelligence in his choreography has survived under the new artistic director of the company, Miroslav Vantukh. Without denying the sheer physical power of Ukrainian folk dance, both Virsky and Vantukh organized their materials for maximum lucidity.

Just as Virsky’s “Squat Dance” exhaustively explored the varied, spectacular possibilities of dancing on haunches, so Vantukh’s “The Carpathians” showcased a wide range of walking steps before accelerating to its dizzying finish.

Both choreographers also understood the awe that large-scale unison movement can produce in the theater--the effect of 20 women weaving long strands of colored yarn into lattice patterns that fill the stage (Virsky’s “The Embroiderers”) or simply gliding through line and circle formations (Vantukh’s “Russian Dance”).

For collectors of drop-dead Soviet bravura, Virsky’s mock-competitive “Ukrainian Lads” offered a fabulous array of cantilevered, flying and hopping turns plus hummingbird spins-in-place, drop-kicks and other specialties.

Indeed, it soon seemed that each male had invented some uniquely intricate or stratospheric or high-velocity stunt with which he earned his place in the company and which he’d unleash on us at the moment when we foolishly believed we’d seen everything.

However, even at their most extroverted, the Virsky dancers retained their innate elegance, their sense of connection to one another and to the people watching them. Thus after the mass geometrics and careening split-leaps of the “Hopak” finale, the dancers faced the last ovation of the evening with hands pressed to their hearts as if something important had been proven to people who mattered.

“We are Ukrainians!” If we didn’t know what that meant at the beginning of the evening, the astonishing skill, energy and spirit of these dancers offered a lesson about national identity that showed us, once and for all.