The Oakland Ballet Company got down to business again Saturday (Oct. 20) at the Oakland Paramount and it was a heartening experience, one awaited by the organization’s many friends in the community since founding director Ronn Guidi revived his production of Nutcracker last December. A mixed program of Guidi’s Greatest Hits, all curiously but piquantly set to French music, reminded local dance people how much the Bay Area lost when the predecessor company was disbanded by its board in spring, 2006.

That, in case you’re new to the scene, followed five years of uninspired leadership of the Oakland Ballet by Karen Brown, sinking ticket sales and the city’s closing of the Calvin Simmons Auditorium. Guidi, who retired in 2001 after 33 years at the helm, has come back to the land of the living and is determined to revive the dream of a superior alternate ballet company in the Bay Area. To remind anyone ignorant of the troupe’s earlier revivals of Diaghilev era masterpieces, Guidi exhumed Vaslav Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun, and surrounded it with Marc Wilde’s durable Bolero and two of his own more appealing short pieces, Trois Gymnopédies and Carnival d’Aix. While Brown sold off many of the Oakland Ballet’s productions, Guidi had wisely preserved the décor and costumes of these works for himself.

This was most definitely a class act, the right way to arise from the ashes. For both Saturday performances, Guidi hired members of the Oakland East Bay Symphony and its music director Michael Morgan, who again proved a savvy and accommodating presence in the ballet pit. The Satie Gymnopédies and Debussy L’Après-midi d’un Faune benefited most from Moore’s responsive touch, and the presence of the harpist at the side of the proscenium reminded us of the crowded space of the Paramount pit.

Although the Oakland Ballet Company has pretty much existed only on paper, Guidi assembled his performers from the local freelance pool, complementing them with students from his Oakland Ballet Academy. A company look, understandably, was missing from Saturday’s matinee. Under these circumstances, one must be grateful for the overall spirit of the performances, eager if not terribly polished. But, one at least could observe dancers flexing their stylistic muscles.

Surely, the hero of the afternoon was Ethan White, who performed in all four works, and if he stays with the company, will receive the kind of education he will never get at his home base, Smuin Ballet. Assimilating Nijinsky’s frieze-like manner for the 1912 Faun (staged here by Jill Beck) is not a simple task. White still needs a silkier, more integrated gestural approach, but this was a fair approximation of the smitten man-beast, criss-crossing the stage with outstretched palms, feet travelling one way, torso presented to the audience. Jenna McClintock, an Oakland Ballet veteran, offered the requisite come-hither ambiguity as the most desirable of the nymphs. Her well-rehearsed colleagues included Rita Duclos, Michelle Brown, Charissa Chabon, Angela Evans, Amanda McGovern and Marika Takahashi. Ron Steger refurbished the stunning Léon Bakst backdrop.

Guidi’s Trois Gymnopédies (1961) actually predates by four years Frederick Ashton’s Monotones (set to the same orchestrated Satie) and it is not of the same quality as that startling essay. Nevertheless, the earlier work with Fran Stephens’ gleaming white costumes does offer opportunities for attentive partnering and legato phrasing. McClintock and White gave it a noble try, but uncadenced flow, which is what the music is all about, was intermittent.

Carnival d’Aix (1980), which is set to Darius Milhaud’s piano-orchestra score and intended as an homage to the composer and his long tenure at Oakland’s Mills College, romps rather bawdily for 20 minutes. While this tribute to the spirit of commedia dell’arte looks wonderful in John C. Gilkerson’s black-white-and-red costumes, its 12 episodes seem weightless; there’s no center here. The gags, promenades and posing wear thin; the piece really needs an extended pas de deux for contrast. Ellen Wassermann was the adept pianist.

Oakland may be the only ballet company in the world to include two settings of Ravel’s Bolero in its repertoire. In the 1990s, Guidi revived Bronislava Nijinska’s 1928 original, with much critical success. Marc Wilde’s 1974 version, originally made for the Pacific Ballet, has been an audience pleaser since Guidi incorporated it. Entirely understandable; this must be the least pretentious and least erotic visualization of Ravel’s 16-minute crescendo ever delivered to a waiting world. This is one of those bare walls, backstage essays in which the dancers, with deceptive informality, are seized by the spirit of the music. The performers come on, dispatch their classically based solos and duets, a leap here, a lift there, and melt into the crowd. Among others, one noted the contributions of David Fonnegra, David Bertlin (an airborne turn), Denise Roman-Schmalle and Omar Shabazz.

Someday when the Oakland Ballet Company is operating with the schedule of yore, I’d love to see both the Nijinska and Wilde versions of Bolero bookend a program. In any case, Guidi and his team are up and running again. The news couldn’t be better here.

Copyright 2007, VoiceofDance.com.