Music and Dance : High-Energy Show From Russian Gypsies

With its sense of delirious overkill, its high-energy fusion of Russian sentimentality, nomad style and show-biz glitz, the Tsigane company is a Gypsy camp in more ways than one.

This showcase for Moscow-based Gypsy singers, dancers and musicians came to the Scottish Rite Auditorium on Friday complete with its boldly fringed and embroidered black-satin covered wagon.

Gold teeth, metallic embroidery and coins worn as jewelry glittered in the light. So did several generations of performers who knew how to lay on the schmaltz--and amplification--until the audience surrendered unconditionally.

A handsome young violinist named Boris Krepker kept the showiest of rhapsodies fiercely rapturous. Hard-working dancers (usually nine) stomped through Spanish, Hungarian and Bessarabian specialties, looking happiest whenever foot-slapping, thigh-slapping, chest-slapping and floor-slapping became possible.

Georgi Kvick, Nikolai Lekarev and Boris Vassilevsky all offered throaty, forcefully teary song-sets that had members of the Los Angeles Russian community singing and clapping along.

For definitive Gypsy glamour, there was Sveta Jankovskaya, a singer who looked something like a Rose Parade float in her long-sleeved, floor-length pink floral gown with huge slashes of black velvet at the waist and pink chiffon ruffles everywhere, almost as numerous as the coins. Yet she managed to move with utter freedom--down to classic shoulder-shakes in extreme backbend while kneeling. She had clearly conquered shyness long ago.

So had Nikolai Vasiliev and Anatoli Verbitsky, limber youths demonstrating the very, very arcane art of Gypsy tap: arms used like a Russian folk dancer’s, feet (in boots) like hard-driving proteges of Gregory Hines. No Gypsy voguing or Gypsy lambada, alas--but it’s just the start of the company’s 28-city American tour.

Tsigane returns to Scottish Rite Auditorium on Sept. 29 and 30.