PERFORMING ARTS

Datarock

Everything about Datarock is calculated, from the matching red tracksuits and wraparound sunglasses to the over-the-top enthusiasm and canned stage patter ("You're the best audience ever!").

But those calculations add up to a lot of fun, as Datarock showed at the Rock & Roll Hotel on Saturday.

These Norwegian merrymakers take many of their cues from Devo, musically, instrumentally and visually. But where Devo was made up of jesters commenting on society, Datarock's four members are pop showmen who celebrate all the great things about rock and dance music, distilling those bits to their hip-shaking, arena-quaking essence.

Singer-guitarist Fredrik Saroea frequently told the crowd to clap its hands, dedicated "Princess" to "all the ladies" and declared (twice) that Kjetil Moster wasn't playing saxophone but rather a "sex machine." Datarock even broke into a synchronized and aerobicized group dance during "Ugly Primadonna" -- and then politely asked the fans if they were ready for a drum solo.

It might all sound shticky, but Datarock's delight in performing seems real. The group writes super-catchy dance-rock songs, too, so all the booty shaking in the audience wasn't a mechanical exercise: Datarock's music is made to make you move.

This was Datarock's D.C. debut, and the animated crowd chanted to the crispy funk of "Fa-Fa-Fa," rapped along to the smart and witty electro jam "Computer Camp Love" and lost its collective mind singing to the encore, which was a show unto itself. Rather than wrapping up with an original tune, Datarock did an epic karaoke version of the "Dirty Dancing" fave "(I've Had) The Time of My Life," with Moster jumping into the crowd for a soul-stirring sax solo straight outta 1987.

Kitschy? A bit. But it all added up to joyous genius.

-- Christopher Porter

Choralis

Haydn's oratorio "Die Schoepfung" ("The Creation") opens on a scene of quiet, dark orchestral chaos (quite lovely, somewhat chromatic chaos, to be sure) and then proceeds happily through God's busy days of creating: light, the firmament and the waters, plants and animals and, finally, man (remember, Haydn's was an age of optimism) -- proclaiming after each that "it was good."

The cheerful performance of the oratorio that Choralis brought to Alexandria's Schlesinger Concert Hall on Friday left one with this same feeling of satisfaction. The chorus, about 90 strong and augmented with 35 high school members of the Choralis Summer Choral Festival, sang crisply, with splendid diction and impressive presence at both ends of the dynamic spectrum. Attacks were alert and contrapuntal textures were clean and balanced. The well-prepared orchestra was as charming in its roles as eagles and larks as it was as whales and worms.