One critic slapped another at the Paris premiere of Jérôme Bel's "Show Must Go On." Audience members booed, stormed the stage and demanded their money back. But happy guffaws and giggles greeted the piece on Thursday night at Dance Theater Workshop, when Mr. Bel's company made its American debut.

Mr. Bel may be considered an experimentalist in France, where he performed with Angelin Preljocaj and others before moving on to choreography about a decade ago. He and his dancers might have arrived here trailing pretentious artistic baggage, but "The Show Must Go On" is sly, witty, joyous fun.

Mr. Bel seems to be attempting to reinvent in Europe the Judson Dance Theater movement of the 1960's and 70's, about which he apparently knows very little judging from recent interviews in New York. The Judsonites proclaimed the death of virtuosity and artifice in dance, sweeping them away with a wave of everyday tasks performed by untrained dancers in overalls or wearing nothing at all. The 18 performers in "Show," who include Mr. Bel's sisters, lovers and friends, are dressed in everyday clothes, to be sure, and most of what they do in the piece would not require more than a few lessons in any technique. But they, like their choreographer, are out to charm, however scruffily.

Mr. Bel is fond of little jokes, like bathing the audience in pink light for "La Vie en Rose" and plunging the theater into darkness for "Imagine." The sleepy-looking D.J., seated at an unintrusive onstage console, grabs a solo for himself, set to Tina Turner singing "Private Dancer." In another segment, cast members sing comically inapposite phrases from songs that they alone can hear on their Discman players. There is a hilarious unison group Macarena dance, and the choreography for a group dance to Céline Dion singing "My Heart Will Go On," from "Titanic," wickedly incorporates a hokey and familiar image from the film. Mr. Bel, who began his study of choreography by reading about dance, performance and semiotics, arranges his performers on stage with authority. He has a first-rate sense of theater. Tender moments, like walks and embraces to Nick Cave singing "Into My Arms," suggest he is also an endearingly old-fashioned humanist.

Each of the vividly individual performers has become something like a familiar friend by the end. But "The Show Must Go On," which takes its title from a song by Queen, only fitfully approaches its high-flown objectives.

For the most part, the effect is of a dance version of a group sing-along. But in one segment the performers, some grinning and some impassive, stare out for a very long time at an audience first seated in darkness, then bathed in house lights and completely visible. The fourth wall does tumble. All that is left is a laserlike connection between eyes on both sides of the stage.

Jennifer Dunning 26.03.2005