Ballets Jazz de Montreal at Annenberg

Both MAPA and Rossini Cards, performed at Annenberg by Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, began with a similar setting: a row of dancers at the back of the stage moving forward. The repetitive choreography of the former exhausted me; but the latter, while mostly wasting the dance talents of the ensemble, managed to leave a brief, unforgettable experience.

MAPA, aptly named after the composer—Marco Antonio Pena AraÓºjo— opened on a staggered line of dancers. Dressed in Anne-Marie Veevaete's black-and-white full-body costumes and kept in shadows from the waist down by the lighting of Daniel Ranger and Pedro Pederneiras, they blended hypnotically into the similarly patterned background of Fernando Velloso's backdrop. To a soft, ethereal sound, the dancers began rhythmically dipping their hips, moving forward on the ascent like a low wave slowly rolling into the shore from a distance.

This seductive and sumptuous prologue quickly shifted into a volatile display of techniques that fused jazz, samba and meringue dancing in high-energy, lightning-quick movements across the stage. Three dancers moving in unison quickly became five, now fiery-red clad performers exploding across the stage in the same patterns. Paired dancers rolled in turns with the lifting progressions in the music, and men hoisted their partners into quick, mid-air split kicks before turning in a flash to set them down again.

It only takes one to tango

With their hips and hands thrusting from side to side in quick, flirty motions, the dancers crouched down and swept their legs low across the floor, mirroring the playful sense of rhythm in AraÓºjo's music. Dancing alone on stage, Eira Glover's powerfully executed movements conveyed longing, and Shamel Pitts stepped forward to an invisible partner to pull her back, the dexterity of his emotions convincing you that someone was there dancing with him. An undertone of subtle eroticism permeated the entire piece, and both dancers proved that sometimes it only takes one to tango.

But a late addition of capoeira fighting couldn't remedy the choreography's repetitive nature, and at this point my focus shifted from the dancing to the still versatile music. Flutes played like birds chirping, and the drums created a fairy tale effect. But while the choreography intensified the playfully violent nature of sexual energy, I found myself wondering: What else you got? Isn't every dance at least in part about sex?

Yes, the movements dazzled, and the thrill-ride of energy crashed down as abruptly as it began, with the dancers thrusting their hips in one last side-to-side motion before falling prostrate on the ground, exhausting the audience with their exhaustion. But this climax felt cheaply earned, relying on one last intense visual surprise that caught everyone off guard.

The depths of balletic inanity

Like MAPA, Mauro Bigonzetti's Rossini Cards— a series of tableaux inspired by the composer's operas— opened with dancers clad in black sport coats and pants moving forward from a line at the back of the stage. Arriving at the lip of the orchestra pit, they stood still for a full minute before one of the men cast off his jacket as the others peered on dumbstruck. Removing his pants, he leaned over the edge and jumped.

After this engaging start, the entire piece (with one major exception) became an opportunity for Bigonzetti to plumb the depths of balletic inanity. The curtain rose again on the corps seated at a banquet lit by two candelabras, using their arms, shoulders and faces to pantomime anguished conversation, banging their heads on the table before bouncing around in their chairs. Later, a woman in a tattered cocktail dress enacted grotesque motions as partygoers entered the stage, mimicking her before a pair of dancers let out apelike howls.

Then the curtain came down entirely, and one of the ballet dancers appeared in a black evening gown, reading from a menu in Italian, occasionally translating instructions on how to prepare a dish of macaroni. Later, when a man and woman started singing— all in "la, la, la's"— the whole work became ridiculous, almost insulting, and the gimmicky (and only occasionally funny) choreography wasted the ensemble's talent while walking a thin line between the stupid and the profane.

A rare moment of revelation

But in watching one five-minute interlude I incurred a permanent debt to Bigonzetti. After the aforementioned banquet, the curtain fell to knee height, and Christina Bodie and Andrew Murdock— now both naked from the waist up— crawled out. Never once losing contact with each other, he cradled her body before flipping her up overhead, and each moved around the other, engaging in Cirque du Soleil-type contortions— he holding her aloft by one hand and one foot— or reclining on the other's body in rapturous repose.

Their movements— the complete opposite of pornographic vulgarity, felt almost too intimate to watch. In that moment I finally understood why the humans chained inside Plato's cave, once liberated to observe the world of perfect forms, ran back inside to their imprisonment to watch the imperfect reflections on the wall. This ideal of lovemaking— of genuine human connection— was impossible to bear for even five minutes, because so few (if any) experiences in life could ever approach its beauty.

At the end of this remarkable movement, mere applause seemed inadequate. A respectful silence— reflecting a shame that one's own life might never have approached such an ideal— seemed more appropriate. I felt an immense debt to Bigonzetti for showing me something so beautiful, but I couldn't forgive him for encapsulating this piece within the remainder of the frivolous Rossini Cards. A man capable of envisioning such a lofty piece should feel ashamed to create anything less.