PERFORMING ARTS

NSO Players

It was Mozart's birthday this past weekend (he's 252, if you're keeping track), and though they hadn't planned it as such, more than a dozen virtuosos from the NSO gave him a rousing party at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater on Sunday night. In fact, it was really more of a tribute to the classical ideal itself -- the precisely calibrated balance of idea, expression and structure that Mozart brought to perfection.

And as if to make the point, the players paired Mozart with works by that progenitor and high priest of 20th-century neoclassicism, Igor Stravinsky.

It was an intriguing idea, and illustrated once again that when you catch the NSO players in chamber settings, they're usually up to something remarkable. The evening opened with Mozart's Sonata in G, K. 379, played by the orchestra's concertmaster, Nurit Bar-Josef, and pianist Lambert Orkis. These sonatas are sometimes dismissed as lesser works, but there's always a lot of "there" there when Bar-Josef picks up her fiddle; from the stormy Allegro to the infinitely shaded pizzicatos of the final variations, she played it with a slow-burning intensity that was never less than riveting.

Stravinsky's wildly colorful "Histoire du Soldat" Suite followed, with clarinetist Loren Kitt joining the fray. It's a rambunctious piece -- proof that the term "neoclassical" has little to do with minuets and powdered wigs -- and Kitt and Bar-Josef tore into it with satisfying bite. More Stravinsky followed, but his Octet for Winds (with its Haydn-inspired opening and variations that include everything from a cancan to a fugue) was marred, unfortunately, by overly enthusiastic brass players; the winds were often blown away.

But the evening closed with a sublime -- there is no other word -- account of Mozart's Serenade for Winds in C Minor, K. 388. Full of floating beauty and delicately nuanced pathos, it's a paragon of the classical ideal: mysteries wrapped not in enigmas but in utter transparency and grace.

-- Stephen Brookes

Motion Mania

In 1987, anyone could turn on MTV and glimpse backup dancer Bonnie Slawson gyrating for the stars of A&M Records. But the network had yet to gain mainstream momentum, and Slawson realized it was more important to her to be seen live onstage than as a televised blur. So she went back to Rockville (defying a mantra R.E.M. was singing at the time) and founded Motion Mania, a studio for aspiring professional dancers and a school for girls already sliding around the house to Debbie Gibson.

Last weekend, Motion Mania celebrated its 20th anniversary with a retrospective gala that traced music of the past two decades from Janet Jackson through Hannah Montana. At 26 pieces, the concert got a little long in the seats for Motion Mania's loyal fans at Montgomery College's Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center. Friday's show was well attended; Saturday's sold out.