DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM OFFERS ‘CARAVANSERAI’

Introduced locally on Thursday in Pasadena Civic Auditorium, the new Dance Theatre of Harlem staging of Talley Beatty’s plotless group showpiece “Caravanserai” brings back to local audiences a work created in 1973 for the Inner City Repertory Dance Company: a major Los Angeles modern-dance ensemble formed at nearly the same time as the Harlem troupe, but short-lived for reasons never adequately explained.

Those of us who saw “Caravanserai” back then on South New Hampshire Avenue still recall a body heat and nearly tangible sense of atmosphere that the problematic Harlem performance missed entirely. In Pasadena, the hard-driving, overlapping sequences that once built to a crest simply plodded onward.

The recorded pop music by Santana remained intact, of course, along with the projected starscapes and the opening (borrowed from Alwin Nikolais) in which the 24-member cast emerged from a translucent canopy. But only William Pennington’s costumes--long fringe strips worn over arms and legs--still registered strongly, giving the dancers in Beatty’s characteristic lateral surges an afterimage like comets’ tails.

Crowned by Eddie J. Shellman’s spectacular leaps and turns, the Harlem forces danced anything remotely balletic in the work with abundant skill and energy--but looked tentative and often overwhelmed by the jazz- and modern-dance challenges. As the central couple, Virginia Johnson and Donald Williams danced almost doggedly, as if coping was the most they expected to accomplish.

The revival of “Dougla”--choreographed, composed and designed by Geoffrey Holder--revealed some of the same difficulties. Tailored for the funkier Harlem ensemble of 1974, it was danced Thursday by ballet specialists, dancers who set a high standard in Balanchine or Robbins, but who have looked increasingly shaky and listless in the hybrid, quasi-ethnic vehicles that once formed the backbone of the repertory.

In concept, “Dougla” hypothesizes a culture fusing influences from Africa and India, but Holder’s emphasis never strays far from exotic costume spectacle. Though he largely avoids conventional display dancing, he generates considerable intensity through the unison refraction of small motions (head-nodding, finger-wagging, hip-rolling) by the full corps--and by brilliantly staged processionals.

The Harlem women stalked though “Dougla” with some of their original conviction but the pole-wielding men no longer moved with any weight and those in the exercise/combat sequence looked just plain confused. Maybe you can’t go home again--either to South New Hampshire Ave. or to Holder’s fantasist Afro-India.

Danced by familiar principals, John Taras’ popular “Firebird” completed the program.