‘Ghosts’ of Years Past Steals Canadian Show

James Kudelka’s “Ghosts” was the oldest work on the three-part Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal program Wednesday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. But it was the most interesting one by far and the piece that made the company look singularly serious and arresting.

Created for the Canadians in 1993, “Ghosts” consists of a suite set to seven Beatles songs. (The royalties must be horrendous.)

Kudelka, now 41 and artistic director of National Ballet of Canada, opens and closes the work with solos related through costuming and sweetness in approach. Dennis Lepsi begins it dancing “Penny Lane” in light-toned kilts. Susan Gaudreau ends it dancing “Here Comes the Sun” in similar kilts and a vest pinned with flowers (‘60s Flower Power?).

But throughout her solo, she holds her arm over her eyes. To shield them from the sun?To avoid the future? To blot out what happened between the two solos?

Nathalie Huot and Eric Miles, for instance, dance a romantic pas de deux that takes all too literally the line, “Come together, right now, over me,” over the body of Robert Rubinger. Later, in “I Will,” Rubinger slaps around and beats up an increasingly destroyed Frederic Six as Kendra Moore dances airily by herself. Maybe the guys are competing for the girl, but they ignore her completely.

The suite is structurally balanced. Transitions are made in darkly ominous rust-colored light.

There are wry and comic moments and bittersweet jokes (Cherice Barton blithely hanging on to Edgar Zendejas who is enwrapped with Hua Fang Zhang in “Martha My Dear”; Miles, Zendejas and Lepsi executing spiffy synchronized routines in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”). “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” for three couples, goes on too long, but then so does the music.

Following Kudelka’s work, Rodrigo Pederneiras’ “It’s in the Air” (1995; set to a compiled jazz score, including music by Duke Ellington) looked mindless. At least Crystal Pite’s “Pendulum,” (1995; music by Alex Tsisserev ), which opened the program, allowed seven of the 12 company members to show off their most crisp physical prowess.