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"Attaining a 24th season speaks well of a suburban chamber ballet company, and Diablo Ballet wound it up with a varied program, assembling old and new repertory, at Walnut Creek's Del Valle Theater on Friday, May 4. For years the company, under Artistic Director Lauren Jonas, has brought an enlightened artistic diet to Contra Costa County with dancers on the way up. The classics compete here with new works. Diablo Ballet's ambitious plans were on trial Friday. The troupe commissioned from its resident choreographer Robert Dekkers a 40-minute version of \"Red Shoes,\" ostensibly based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale and the 1948 Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger film starring Moira Shearer, which has driven several generations of young girls to don pointe shoes. Recall that in the film heroine Vicki Page is driven by impresario Boris Lermontov to sacrifice everything but her art. Dekkers reveals from the start that building narrative is difficult for him. At the beginning, Temptation, in the person of Christian Squires, gesticulates, and virtually swirls his cape, like a backwater Mephistopheles. That is all it takes to lure \"our heroine\" (the committed Jackie McConnell) into embracing Terpsichore. The remaining members of the company (which numbers 10) are garbed in Cassidy Haley's shiny black sci-fi outfits; most have character names, though what differentiates them is difficult to discern. At the end, the protagonist (now in flesh colored body stocking, but still wearing those shoes), seems to join a sacred order (Michael Wells, Felipe Leon, Alex McCleery). This all makes minimal sense as story, but Dekkers here exhibits a gift for moving large groups of dancers that I have not noticed in his choreography for his own company, Post:Ballet. The groupings and unisons generate a modicum of tension, though the futuristic rave atmosphere makes minimal sense in the context of this tale. The company strode, marched and grimaced with conviction. Then there was Dekkers' chosen music, most of the score Philip Glass wrote for Twyla Tharp's \"In the Upper Room\" 32 years ago. This first-generation minimalism has had its day and its decades as ballet accompaniment. On Friday, it merely served to pump everybody up. Recalling the good scores Dekker has commissioned for his own company, the Glass was doubly disappointing, especially when heard through the Del Valle Theater's faulty sound system. The evening started on a brighter note with a revival (staged by Leslie Young) of Lew Christensen's 1976 neoclassic charmer, \"Four Norwegian Moods,\" created to honor the 25th anniversary of Christensen's directorship of the San Francisco Ballet, but soon taken into the repertoire of the New York City Ballet. Essentially a pas de deux set to one of Igor Stravinsky's rarely heard scores, the work demands youthful bravado and superior technique, both of which Squires and Amanda Farrow supplied in abundance. The program also featured the fifth movement of Val Caniparoli's \"Stolen Moments,\" featuring Wells, Rosselyn Ramirez, Jordan Tilton and Raymond Tilton. It ended just as it got interesting. Allan Ulrich is The San Francisco Chronicle's dance correspondent. Diablo Ballet: Dances by Robert Dekkers, Lew Christensen and Val Caniparoli. 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, May 5. Del Valle Theater, 1963 Tice Valley Road, Walnut Creek. $25-$47. (925) 943-7469. www.diabloballet.org"
<https://www.sfchronicle.com/performance/article/Robert-Dekkers-Red-Shoes-not-quite-the-12890827.php>