HUSTON, NEWMAN OFFER MIXED BAG

Valerie Huston and Gloria Newman are each Southern California-based choreographers who enrich expressive possibilities in their work by mixing a number of movement influences.

On a shared “Dance Park” program Saturday at the John Anson Ford Theatre, Huston’s style of ballet looked weightier and twistier than academic classicism--and Newman’s type of modern dance seemed nearly reactionary in its use of character pantomime.

To taped music, Huston’s nine-member Santa Barbara company executed four pieces with diligence but little flair. Indeed, apart from Leslie Johnson, the women in Huston’s “Passementerie” (an intimate, lyrical suite to French vocal music) looked merely dutiful and, in her “Creation du Monde” (a mercurial full-company vehicle to Milhaud), all the intriguing contrasts between linear ballet technique and the kind of pliancy belonging to modern dance flattened out for the same reason.

The male trio “Mythos” by Nolan Dennett (music by George Rochberg) earned major interest for its fluid gymnastic partnering gambits plus the genuine zest and intelligence of the dancing. But when the same men returned for Marina Harris’ labored group romp “Igor” (to Stravinsky), they again looked just as blank as the women.

“They dance as if they have sand in their legs,” commented a friend at intermission. Or in their heads. Certainly no “Dance Park” dancers (including those stuck in wretched “Dance Kaleidoscope” choreographies) have yet been so oddly vacant and uncommitted--evidently overworked, undermotivated or up past their bedtime.

Gloria Newman’s staging of “Carmina Burana” used the full resources of the Ford Theatre in the kind of pageant not seen there since the old “Pilgrimage Play” held sway. On the stairway and upper level to the left, the Valley Master Chorale and musicians performed Carl Orff’s scenic cantata under Gerald Eskelin’s leadership.

The right stairway, most of the upper level and all of the lower belonged to Newman’s 15-member Orange County company: heroic in energy output, capable in technique, versatile in characterization.

Indeed, Newman put more emphasis on rough and tumble mime portraits than on formal dancing and her staging often achieved its theatrical vigor at the expense of choreographic focus and the music.

Riding over shifts of tempo, dynamics, mood--even changes of musical numbers--Newman’s action plan created a lusty evocation of 13th-Century European peasant life, plus (in those hooded figures stalking the edges of the stage) a compelling memento mori as well.

Besides the pianists, percussionists and choral forces responding to Eskelin’s urgent conducting, the amplified solos of Nona Ring, Scott Whitaker and Thomas Enders helped this “Carmina Burana” achieve its distinctive vitality.