Grace and Electricity From Georgians

On stage at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, a culture of ceremony, chivalry and pageantry unfolds, as beautiful as an illuminated medieval manuscript, as heroic as a people preparing for defensive war.

The Georgian State Dance Company, making its first U.S. tour in 10 years, returned to the Southland on Thursday, with all the women’s grace and men’s virtuosity intact.

This is the style of dancing in which demure, long-gowned women glide serenely across the stage, accompanied by awe-struck, protective men who dare not touch them. To preen or to extend their range, the men will go up on their toes, like ballet dancers, but in punishing soft leather boots, not blocked toe shoes.

Alternatively, the men will become fierce, gymnastic warriors, closing in tight ranks or bounding in electrifying acrobatics, spinning in the air to land on their shins or turning across the floor on their knees, urging one another on with competitive feats.

In a colorful, multi-part program, the Georgians, some 50 dancers and live musicians (as well as musicians on tape), presented a range of regional, court and social dances, and made sure instantly to replay the firepower sequences that ended each half of the program.

It was gratifying to see that the women’s traditional role, under company director Tengiz Sukhishvili and chief choreographer and company matriarch Nina Ramishvili, has been extended sometimes to include movements of greater volume and speed. But essentially this is a folk culture that presents women as beautiful and to be admired and men as virile and ready for battle.

Yet nothing is quite that simple. Masculinity here embodies speed and feline grace as well as the martial arts, often in rapid juxtaposition. It’s not your everyday machismo. And the women’s calm transcends passivity to evoke a spiritual or otherworldly grace.

Either way, the Georgians put on a terrific show and they are heartily welcomed back.

* The company will repeat the program today, 8 p.m., and Sunday, 2 p.m., Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive. $24-$35. (800) 300-4345.