DANCE REVIEW : BATTLE / MILLSAP / YOUNG AT L.A. THEATRE CENTER

At a time when Bill T. Jones, Blondell Cummings and others are developing new contexts and vocabularies for black dance, Los Angeles remains a refuge for the all but exhausted jazz-modern idiom in service since the 1950s. A shared evening on the L.A. Theatre Center “Locomotion” series, Monday in Theatre 2, offered what seemed the last gasp of this over-familiar, overtaxed form.

Ruby Millsap’s duet “Spell” and two solos (“Whispers” and “Stormy Monday”) by Lettie Battle not only adopted this movement style without shaping it in any individual way, they also imposed on it the same kind of crude emoting. Facial signals alone conveyed what these choreographers intended--the dancing stayed, at best, flashy, inexpressive filler.

Obviously, dance can directly convey states of feeling, but these choreographers used it merely to mirror the pulse of their recorded pop scores or to display physical prowess. If Millsap and Battle had messages to deliver about fear, alienation or despair, they relied exclusively on acting. There was no image, structure or content to these dances that was not wholly dependent on mime.

Battle has a certain feverish presence that an astute choreographer could exploit without allowing us to glimpse her uneven technique. Darrel Wright and, especially, Eartha Robinson (in “Spell”) display a promise that might blossom with careful nurturing and legitimate challenges. But the indulgent exercises presented Monday served nobody.

In the “Dance Park” series this summer, dancer L. Martina Young and musician Ray Pizzi met in an exciting improvisational encounter that they did not match in their fitful, curiously insular “Jazz Improvisations III” on Monday.

Young began with character walks that might have developed into something but were quickly discarded. Then she picked up a few of Pizzi’s riffs and let them ripple through her torso and limbs--but, again, never sustained any idea or impulse for long.

Finally, she became absorbed with winding herself up in a bolt of silver-gray material and lost contact with Pizzi entirely. Young is one of the local dance community’s major resources but she has never looked less effective than when snarled in yardage while Pizzi played “Body and Soul.”