Elaine Kudo’s “Opposites Distract” (1999) was equally showy but certain of its scope. Kudo has extensive experience dancing ballet-meets-ballroom as a former principal in Twyla Tharp’s “Sinatra Suite.” The ballet feels of its time, but as a welcome token of how far ballet has evolved from the time when it felt hermetically sealed off from other dance styles. Thopiah, Wilkins, Pakela Newalu-Gomes and Alyssa Viray formed a relational quadrangle of swapping partners, enticing, slighting, and trusting each other. The greatest tension was in Thopiah and Viray’s ballroom pointe work. Ballroom and ballet require different uses of shifting weight that are infrequently compatible. They made the fusion look easy as they were thrown over their partners’ shoulders a la swing dancing before executing a saute into a pas de chat. Newalu-Gomes was suave and supine in a solo that grounded the dance amidst the melange of lifts. Live music elevates most dancing, and “Opposites Distract” begs for it. The recorded Ottmar Leibert’s music was serviceable, but his composition is fleshy and exacting and Kudo’s interpersonal dynamics were ripe for the added relationship of a musician.

Wei Wang’s “Child’s Play” was the most playful ballet on the program, but with enough acid to keep it from feeling jejune. A simple concept—musical chairs—developed into a grand melee of power struggles. Five chairs encircled center stage facing outwards. Magana, the only dancer in pointe shoes, was the Boss, imperious as she set the game into action for Griffith, Katie Choi, Mimi Lamar, Taiyo Makimura, and Devon Martinez y McFarland, all dressed in black suits with white shirts. 

If you’ve ever played musical chairs, you know how this ballet will end: elimination. Wang successfully held interest in the inevitable by focusing more on the relational see-sawing of the ensemble than on the game itself. “Child’s Play” has a lot of dancing—a motif of a low layout with maximal arching underpinned chugs and piques—all of which supports the clarity of focus. Each dancer communicated the stakes of the game, losses, wins, alliances, double-crosses in the way they looked at each other, in their posture and the ways in which they handled the chairs. As the energy ratcheted up there were moments in which Zhou Long’s bombastic score threatened to overwhelm the choreographic nuances, but Wang ended the ballet smartly. No matter the last player standing, the boss always wins. 

The Oakland Asian Cultural Center obligated close proximity between the audience and performers. It reminded me of LoftOpera, the NYC-based company that was all the rage 10 years ago, producing opera in intimate spaces, inviting the uninitiated to appreciate an opera singer’s technique up-close. Ballets are rarely produced at such a close distance and I think there is an opportunity gained. The Oakland Ballet dancers have a strength legible at any distance.