Pascal Rioult, whose Dance Theatre made its debut at the Bermuda Festival on Wednesday evening, is something of an enigma in the world of modern dance.

Possessor of a fine intellect, French-born Rioult's Masters in Science Education from the prestigious University of Paris led to a professorship at that institution until, for whatever reason, he took off for the US, where he had been awarded a fellowship with innovative modern dance choreographer Merce Cunningham: signs of physical as well as cerebral ability had surfaced earlier when, as a teenager, he competed on a national level in track and field.

Europe is perhaps the key in unlocking the individualism of this choreographer and dancer. Schooled in the highest echelons of American modern dance, his mind -- and almost certainly, his heart -- has its roots in his homeland and, more specifically, in Normandy, where he was born and grew up, an area which played unwilling host to some of the most desperate events of World War II. In common with most modern dance exponents, Rioult has little truck with wit or humour in the business of dance: earnestness and angst is the order of the night in a regimen where the choreographer -- but certainly not the interpreter -holds sway.

That Rioult is an innately musical choreographer (woefully absent in so many contemporary dance creators) was immediately apparent in the curtain-raiser, Aurora , premiered last year, and performed to the music of Mozart's Cassation No. 2.

The company, led by Rioult and clad in white (effective against a very dark ground) commenced in silence, the girls' calm fluidity offset by the sheer athleticism of the men as they wove serenely through the measured momentum of the music: the slow movement was particularly beautiful, the female dancers revealing, in their turned-out feet and meticulously pointed (bare) feet, that they had been classically trained. Ravel, who straddled both the 19th and 20th century, provided the music for Rioult's next work, Home Front . Matching the impressionistic score, the choreographer utilises women moving meltingly about the stage in pale blue, bow-tied dresses reminiscent, somehow, of both woodland bluebells and demure young mademoiselles. The arrival of some highly aggressive, yet protective males who, struck to the ground, pick themselves up, dust themselves off and carry on with the dance of life, was strikingly symbolic: the violent intrusion of a scarlet-hued woman representing, presumably, the poppy-red fields of death, and the stoicism of all people flung into the arena of conflict, be it of the personal variety, or that imposed by warring nations, was especially effective. Strangely, the word `theatre' which forms part of the company's name, was not fully apparent until the second half of the programme, which culminated in the last, truly wondrous creation of the evening.

There were, however, hints of this in Rioult's clever re-telling of a fable by his compatriot, La Fontaine -- in this case, that of The Oak and the Reed .

The sturdy figure of Rioult himself represented the mighty oak, with the lithe Craig Biesecker taking on the role of the reed who, with appropriately sinuously adaptable movement in an elongated and slightly gender-bizarre pas de deux, proved in his ability to `go with the flow', his ultimate superiority over the grounded grandeur of the oak tree.

And so to the last work: Rioult's brilliantly disturbing interpretation of Ravel's La Valse, already immortalised by two of this century's most musical choreographers -- through the neo-classicism of Balanchine and the Shakespearean vision of Frederick Ashton. Rioult, similarly intrigued by the swirling momentum of the score has chosen, however, to revolt against the implied atmosphere of a grand ball. The evocative composer originally named his work Wien (Vienna), and his latest terpsichorean interpreter has reverted to that title for what is, perhaps, his finest creation (in 1995 and the earliest work represented in this programme).

Superbly danced by six members of the company, they transported the audience into a nightmare world as the lush dance rhythms of old Vienna embraced the increasing frenzy of a people poised on the brink of extinction: while this could, theoretically, apply to any country at almost any time in history, this piece exuded the sense of foreboding that enveloped that romantic old city in the 1930's as the Nazi oppression of the Jews took fatal hold. Reminiscent, at times, of Tudor's masterpiece, Dark Elegies , both conveying through group movement, gestures and patterns, a communal sense of profound loss, Rioult's work contrasts with Tudor, who mourns an accomplished tragedy. Rioult, on the other hand, presents, perhaps, a far more disturbing vision of horrors to come: his use of tight-knit, uniform movement of the group -- clad, unlike The Waltz's usual interpreters, in dingy working-clothes -- achieved a marvellously frenzied speed, as they scurried about, clinging closely and dropping momentarily and picking themselves up from the floor. Shivering knees, bowed heads, flailing arms and abrupt suspension of movement, whirling circles caught in a rhythm of dance and life tragically out of control, silent screams echoed by elongated, pencil-thin shadows silhouetted in an indeterminate landscape, added to the intense theatricality of what may well prove to be Pioult's signature work.

Wien was rapturously received by the audience who broke out in loud cheers at the dramatic end of one of the finest modern dance works yet seen in Bermuda.

FABLES IN DANCE: The Pascal Rioult Dance Theatre, pictured in The Oak and the Reed sequence from Fables , is currently appearing in the Bermuda Festival at the Ruth Seaton James Centre.