Elisabeth Vincentelli

Elisabeth Vincentelli

Theater

‘Chéri’ struggles to create drama

Since 1893, only 12 dancers have been designated “prima ballerina assoluta,” which is like being crowned empress of the ballet galaxy. So it’s a big deal that the last one to earn that title — Alessandra Ferri, back in ’92 — is fresh out of retirement and doing a show in New York.

Yet you won’t find her at Lincoln Center but near a Lincoln Tunnel ramp, at a small off-Broadway theater.

It’s a testament to director-choreographer Martha Clarke’s pull that for her latest dance-theater experiment, “Chéri,” she persuaded Ferri, now 50, to play a melancholy cougar named Lea.

The show, presented by the Signature company, is based on two French novels by Colette: 1920’s “Chéri” and its 1926 sequel, “The Last of Chéri.” The books are short to begin with, but Clarke (“Garden of Earthly Delights”) and writer Tina Howe (“Coastal Disturbances”) went at them with a hatchet because their adaptation runs just over an hour.

The focus here is strictly on the relationship between Lea and the title character, played by American Ballet Theatre principal Herman Cornejo. Lea is “still turning heads as she approaches the half-century mark” while her lover is half her age.

Every once in a while, Amy Irving comes in as Charlotte — Chéri’s cynical mother and Lea’s best friend — and tells us what’s going on. The rest of the show is pure dance. Needless to say, this approach is quite different from the 2009 movie adaptation, with Michelle Pfeiffer as Lea.

The lithe, raven-haired Ferri and the compact Cornejo roll around on an unmade bed, flirt by a breakfast table, leap and writhe around the stage in a silk nightie for her, pajamas for him. In erotic bliss, they float, seemingly untethered by gravity. But then loneliness and despair down them when Charlotte pushes her son into the arms of an (unseen) 18-year-old girl before he heads off to WWI.

Clarke has a fantastic eye, and she comes up with some striking visuals, some involving a floor-length mirror. There’s a dreamy quality here that’s enhanced by snippets of Ravel, Debussy and other piano pieces, performed live by Sarah Rothenberg.

Even so, “Chéri” struggles to create drama. The burner seems stuck on simmer — not quite the right setting for a show about passion.