Theater New Reviews: Ballroom With a Twist, Cologne, Cyclops: A Rock Opera

GO  BALLROOM WITH A TWIST One of Dancing With the Stars' professional dancers, Louis Van Amstel, stages his own show after an illustrious 20-year career as a performer and competitive dancer. His fluidly staged, marvelously high-caliber entertainment (with a couple of also-ran American Idol singers, Gina Glocksen and David Hernandez, thrown into the mix) moves seamlessly from fast numbers to slow ballads, from dance to song and back again. Athletic bodies draped with Randall Designs' gorgeous costumes cavort through Van Amstel's well-orchestrated spectacle, which also celebrates diversity with its casting of various races and body shapes. Van Amstel hosts the evening, assisted by hilarious comedian Niecy Nash (his partner from the most recent season of DWTS). She brings welcome humor when not tearing up the dance floor. The costumes are figure-hugging sexy, flowing and dazzling (with rhinestones) as well as casual and relaxed for some of the modern dance numbers. Van Amstel's exceptional choreography feels liberated from the constraints and repetition of competitive ballroom regulations. Salsa, paso doble, jitterbug, quick-step, waltz and Argentine tango — Van Amstel name-checks every dance style while employing everything from slow ballad duets to clubby dance mixes of classic and contemporary tunes — something for everyone. El Portal Theatre, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., N. Hlywd.; perfs Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sat.-Sun., 3 p.m., through Feb. 13. (818) 508-0281, elportaltheatre.com. (Pauline Adamek)

CAVALIA A horse is a horse and something more: the symbol of might that helped humans conquer the world. (Cirque du Soleil wouldn't stage Cowvalia.) "Helped," however, is an overstatement. We're drawn to horses despite — or because of? — their flagrant lack of interest in us. Lions and Labradors track their trainers with their eyes. At Cavalia, horses get rapturous applause simply for walking sideways — we're flattered that these awesome beasts have deigned to do our will. It's empowering to see that these equine masters can literally take a horse to water and make it drink. Still, there's a limit to what a horse can actually do: walk, run, run in geometric patterns. Where the human spine can turn the body 360 degrees, theirs are stubbornly parallel. At least they make gorgeous balance beams for humans to leap, tumble and swing across their backs. And in one routine, the riders stand astride a pair of ponies like water skis. Ponderous and pretty, the show dresses up its cast in medieval and caveman garb to tap into the primal wonder of the man-horse bond, and the music and stunts seem designed not to spook the livestock. But when the riders pay homage to rodeo star Yakima Canutt with some full-speed riding tricks, the thrill of danger wakes up the crowd. The showstopper, though, is a slow bit where trainer Sylvia Zerbini mesmerizes nine white, unbridled horses into lining up and running laps on her command, thus becoming the idol of every girl under the big white tent, especially the 4-year-old next to me, who kept exclaiming, "Horsies!" Under the Big Top/downtown Burbank, 777 N. Front St., Burbank; Wed.-Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 3 & 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m., through Feb. 6. 866-999-8111. (Amy Nicholson)

GO  COLOGNE In this solo drama, writer-director Tony Abatemarco eloquently describes growing up gay in the 1960s in a part of rural Long Island that "looked exactly like Iowa." If the piece is not, strictly speaking, autobiographical, it's clearly highly personal. In the world of horny teen boys who haven't yet mastered the art of dealing with girls, blatant homoeroticism and rabid homophobia exist side by side (one of the boys performs a spectacular strip-tease to an enthusiastic audience). The protagonist, Harry (Harry Hart-Browne), is a gay boy who's fascinated with Robert, a truculent local hero who's already a man among boys. He sets out to seduce Robert, and to some extent succeeds. Later, when Harry is fearful of being outed, he outs Robert instead, setting him up for a severe beating by local bullies. He retains a lifelong fascination with Robert, even after the Stonewall riots provide a measure of personal liberation. Oddly, the narrative is presented in the third person, which has a slightly distancing effect, perhaps necessary to keep the graphic sexual descriptions from being too personal. Hart-Browne delineates his characters sharply and with enormous conviction. Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz; Fri.-Sat., 8:30 p.m., runs indefinitely. (702) 582-8587. (Neal Weaver)

GO  CYCLOPS: A ROCK OPERA It gets so wearying — all the satyr plays being done in L.A. ... No, hold on, sorry: Was confusing satyr plays with autobiographical solo shows. Satyr plays are an ancient Greek oddity: violent, erotic, comedic concoctions that used to be performed with three tragedies in annual festivals. Only one still exists, Cyclops by Euripides, filched from the Homeric legend of Odysseus being drawn to the shores of Mt. Aetna by the seductive love call of the Sirens. In Louis Butelli, Chas LiBretto & Robert Richmond's scintillating rock-opera adaptation, featuring a hedonistic band (the Satyrs) in goatskin pantaloons and a bare-chested drummer (Stephen Edelstein), that love call sounds like so much caterwauling. Co-directed by the co-adapters, the event recalls Radoslaw Rychik's adaptation of Bernard-Marie Koltès' In the Solitude of Cotton Fields last year at REDCAT — a similar kind of rock cantata backed up by the Polish band Natural Born Chillers. Here, almost everyone's eyes are rimmed in goth black paint, and half the cast have fingernails to match. The music ranges from twisted ukulele-accompanied ballads, to Mick Jagger and punk lampoons, singing the story of how Odysseus (LiBretto) subjugated (by intoxicating with wine and then blinding) the one-eyed cycloptic monster, Polyphemus (Jayson Landon Marcus), who has been holding Dionysus (Casey Brown) captive, along with almost everyone else in the shadow of the mountain. (Polyphemus is the embittered son of Poseidon, if you follow such things.) A trio of gorgeous Maenads (Nicole Flannigan, Madeleine Hamer, Liz Sydah), attired in figure-clenching silks (costumes by Caiti Hawkins), serve as backup singers (and more). One of them mentions that cruelty in life brings a legacy of contempt, whereas kindness brings a legacy of enduring love. This beautiful idea doesn't sound particularly Greek, given their rigid codes of honor and revenge. Whether or not Homer or Euripides gave it lip service, that Shakespearean notion anchors and gives this ancient comic-book update its humanity, a moral hall pass for the hedonism it wallows in so gleefully, and with such style and skill. Psittacus Productions at Son of Semele Theater, 3301 Beverly Blvd., L.A.; in rep with SOS' Company Creation Festival, Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 5 p.m., through March 6. sonofsemele.org. (Steven Leigh Morris)