Baryshnikov's variety compelling

CLEARWATER -- Mikhail Baryshnikov and the White Oak Dance Project took us places familiar and unknown Tuesday at Ruth Eckerd Hall.

The familiar was Baryshnikov's opening piece, Largo. With music by Arcangelo Corelli, the dance (choreographed by Lucinda Childs) was austere yet plaintive. Baryshnikov's moves were quiet, graceful and full of yearning. At times he simply stood, almost defiantly, as if to remind us that breathing can be dance, too.

When the piece began, Baryshnikov was facing away from the audience as the lights went up. He was dressed in simple black and white, and his moves were gentle and expressive.

The next piece featured Baryshnikov and the company in an odd piece of clockwork choreography. Early Floating took place under a Calderesque mobile; the humans underneath it were attached to the mobile as they danced, using invisible wires to keep their distance and form.

The piece was quirky and funny. The late Erick Hawkins crafted it in 1961, and it still holds the hopefulness of that time.

After a break, the curtain came up on stage hands taping sheets of plastic to the stage. Good heavens, it was bubble wrap! Hundreds of square feet of bubble wrap, ripe for the popping. Sarah Michaelson's intricate dance The Experts seemed to be about bugs getting along. Baryshnikov seemed to be a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, and other bugs (including a hip, "fly" butterfly) were trying to help or hinder. Dancing on bubble wrap added extra rhythm tracks to the oddly brilliant music by Mike Iveson Jr.

The zooming race car projected on a long screen above the stage added drama with careening auto sounds as the bugs popped every time they moved. Were the bugs popping on the windshield?

The evening's final dance, Chacony, made the other dances possible. Just as seeing Picasso's simple work prepares you for the power of his rule-breaking art, the dance steps so simply yet sumptuously presented to Benjamin Britten's music showed the grace of a guileless movement without clever tricks. Flash and filigree are fun, but a simple extended hand can touch the heart in ways busier dancing does not.

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