Looks at love Festival Ballet’s romantic fare BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Festival Ballet Providence’s artistic director Mihailo (Misha) Djuric first saw Stravinsky’s classic ballet The Firebird while still a student in his native Yugoslavia. There he encountered the internationally-known choreographer Dimitrije Parlic and his interpretation of Firebird, which shaded the Russian folk tale with more emotional content than had Mikhail Fokine when he first collaborated with composer Igor Stravinsky.

In 1996, as director of New Hampshire’s Ballet New England, Djuric created his own Firebird, inspired by his former teacher’s vision of it. Festival Ballet Providence presented Djuric’s piece in 1999, during his first season at Festival, and they are reprising it for Valentine’s Day weekend (February 13 through 15 at the VMA Arts & Cultural Center; call [401] 353-1129), along with two other works from repertory, Soledad and Extremes.

When asked about his choice of Firebird for this romantic holiday, Djuric replied: "It’s a very dramatic love story, with everything necessary for good theater: conflict and solution, good vs. evil. It’s also short, so that if you want to have a night out and one of you appreciates dance and the other doesn’t, you don’t have to sit through a long, long piece."

The story of The Firebird begins with Prince Ivan (Gleb Lyamenkoff) wandering into an enchanted forest that belongs to the evil monster Katschai (Eivar Martinez). There he sees the Firebird (Leticia Guerrero) in a tree of golden apples, and he captures this fascinating creature who is part bird/part woman. But eventually she wins her freedom by giving him a magic feather.

Farther along in the forest, he comes to a group of 11 princesses, and he dances with one of them, Princess Elena (Jennifer Ricci), until dawn, when the bewitched princesses must return to Katschai’s palace. When Ivan follows them, he too is captured by Katschai’s minions. But he summons the Firebird with the feather, and she makes the monsters dance themselves into exhaustion. Then she guides Ivan in breaking Katschai’s spell, which releases the princesses.

Seen in rehearsal last weekend, Festival’s Firebird has as much drama in its choreography as in its story or in the surge and swell of Stravinsky’s familiar score. At one point, in a feat of balance and grace, Guerrero rides atop Lyamenkoff’s shoulder; at another, Lyamenkoff has a breathtaking pas de deux with Ricci; at still another, the monsters (22 company members) stomp on stage to threaten Lyamenkoff before they circle and leap in a dervish-like frenzy until they fall to the floor and slither offstage.

"It’s not a complete experience if you don’t believe what’s going on on the stage," stressed Djuric. "It’s not as strong and memorable. You cannot portray life on stage without the emotional connection that makes the characters believable."

Djuric credits Parlic with his sense of "good dance-theatre" and with his dedication to the art of dance. In reaching into his own choreographic repertory for the Valentine performances, he pulled out the lyrical and sensuous Soledad, set to the tango-infused music of Astor Piazzolla, and the more abstract Extremes, which draws on contemporary composer Barbara Kolb’s dialogue between cello and flute. Both pieces also stem from ’96 and have been seen in Rhode Island in ’99 and ’01.

"What I like about European theater is that certain plays or ballets stay on the repertoire for five or more years," Djuric explained. "Each time you come back to it, you can go deeper and deeper into the characters. I’m now able to explain the roles better to the dancers, understanding the reasoning behind their actions and explaining the psychological moments, the conversation, what is going on."

As choreographer/director, Djuric does this constantly with his dancers in rehearsal. In Soledad, in addition to the seductive quality of their hip-swaying tango-like movements, the characters (10 dancers) also project a sense of existential loss and loneliness. Karla Kovatch and Piotr Ostaltsov, married partners in their offstage lives, perform an intense and beautiful duet that throbs with longing and heartache.

Extremes has less narrative but still maintains an emotional tug. Echoing the extremes of cello and flute sounds in Kolb’s composition, Djuric emphasizes extremes in arm and leg extensions, in angular lines that require the dancers (Kovatch and Lyamenkoff) to stretch physically. But the partnering demands a kind of psychic stretch as well, giving the audience a look at how opposites in gender, nature, and personality must make accommodations to one another.

"Everything that you do in life is about love," Djuric noted. "There are so many ways to look at love."

And he’s giving us three different views on the topic in this trio of dances: magical and romantic, alluring but anxious, edgy and pragmatic. If one perspective doesn’t pull you in, another just might. See this show with a special someone in your life.