A Sampler of Polish Folk Dance, Music

For almost a half century, the radical adaptation, stylization and abridgment of native performance traditions has been the specialty of Mazowsze, State Folk Song and Dance Ensemble of Poland.

Indeed, with 25 different pieces in a two-hour program--and many of those pieces subdivided into four or five sections--a Mazowsze performance represents a full-evening medley: a kaleidoscopic sampling of a great national culture that obviously speaks deeply to Polish Americans but can become a blur of smiling faces and waving hands to other spectators.

At the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, the five dozen company singers, dancers and musicians rocketed through the rep with energy, versatility and assurance. Sometimes unusual folk instruments appeared on stage--barrel-bass and the so-called “devil’s fiddle” in a suite from the Baltic Sea area, for example. But these artifacts never stayed on view long enough to tell you anything about the people they belonged to. They merely proved decorative grist for the mill, novelties strewn along the speedway from the overture to the finale.

Dances that once took all Europe by storm--the Mazurka, of course, but also the spirited, elegant Krakowiak, or Cracovienne--also whizzed by, leaving no afterimage. Only the ensemble “Lubuskie Winobranie,” with its artful interlacing of flower hoops (for the women) and vine garlands (for the men) was allowed time to develop complexity and evoke a different reality than that of superficial ethnic vaudeville.

What a waste: So many centuries for each song, dance and style to evolve. So many hours to create each intricate costume and master each challenging performance skill. And, in the end, nobody trusted the result to hold an audience for more than a few minutes.

Such mistrust may have been reasonable when composer Tadeusz Sygietynski and his wife, actress Mira Ziminska-Sygietynska, founded Mazowsze in 1948, but today, in many countries, a healthy audience exists for deeper, more purposeful folkloric presentations. Not to mention better companies than this to serve that audience.

* Mazowsze performs again tonight at 8, Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive. $25-$40. (800) 300-4345.