ELGART’S DANCES EXPLORE HUMAN THEMES

At first glance, choreographer/dancer Sarah Elgart seems a wildly unlikely candidate to create dances about personal alienation and social aggression.

A strikingly attractive woman, Elgart is expressive, articulate and much in demand these days for making pop music videos. She already has 35 videos to her credit, working with artists such as Patti LaBelle, Kenny Rogers, Santana and the Pointer Sisters.

She also has choreographed three feature films, including the soon-to-be released “Howard the Duck” for Lucasfilm Ltd./Universal Productions.

But Elgart insists that her serious modern dance works “explore the situation in the world at large and (are) a personal search for what hope there is--and what hope there isn’t.”

“The dances are about how we experience ourselves and reflect on ourselves,” Elgart said in a recent pre-rehearsal interview. “They should encourage people to look within to find our own potential for violence, our own potential for being an alienating person.

“For me, dances are a means to an end.”

Elgart and her Los Angeles-based, seven-member company will explore these themes in a program of her works at 3 and 7:30 p.m. on Saturday at Trabuco Hills High School in Mission Viejo.

Among the dances scheduled are:

--”Deeper Reasons,” choreographed in 1985 for a music video by jazz pianist Liz Story. Elgart described the work as being “about the spaces in between people, about absence, the sense of loss and the sense of being lost.”

--”Heartbait,” “a story about three people that causes you, I hope, to think about yourself and your relationships.”

--”Recess,” a work that uses children’s games and traditional nursery rhymes to explore the frightening pressures experienced by a child in school. (The dance was created in 1984 with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.)

A fourth work, “Strategies,” will provide a lighter touch: “It’s a dance-theater piece for four women dressed in business suits and carrying briefcases. It’s about corporate decision-making and is often humorous,” Elgart said.

Describing her work in general, the choreographer said: “I’m really interested in crossing the lines between everyday movement and dance. I get raw material in watching children play or in preachers trying to convert people.”

Elgart credits this interest in “the human part of movement” to her year’s study with disciples of choreographers Pina Bausch and Kurt Joss at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, Germany, in 1978.

“I felt pretty alienated at first because it was a small town and people were sensitive to the presence of outsiders,” she said. “But the people I studied with had a broader view of dance, far above anything I had seen in the United States.

“I was heading in this direction anyway, but they helped make me see the possibilities in bringing together theater, everyday movement and gesture in dance.”

A native of Oak Park, Ill., Elgart moved to the Los Angeles area when she was 4 and began dancing as “a baby ballerina.” She studied with Stanley Holden and Mary Jane Eisenberg, then moved to New York 10 years ago to study at the Martha Graham school. She declined to give her age.

Elgart’s recent work in music videos has stimulated her interest in the media, she said, and is the subject of her work-in-progress--”Ar/rest”--part of which will be on Saturday’s programs.

“I’m interested in our interactions with the media because we’re affected by everything around us--street signs, TV, film, all sorts of stimulation,” Elgart said. “In fact, we’re oversaturated with information, especially in L.A.”

The dance is part of a larger work, “On the Air,” which Elgart is developing with the Los Angeles Theater Center.

The work incorporates improvisation to a greater degree than any of her earlier work, Elgart said.

But process has always been an important part of her creativity.

“I deal very directly with my dancers and the discoveries that happen between them and me in rehearsal,” she said. “Letting accidents happen is an art in itself.”

Even though she deals with serious subjects, Elgart does not want her works to be described as bleak, humorless and without hope.

“There’s a lot of optimism in my works,” Elgart insisted. “In fact, my works spring from hope. But also because I’ve grown more aware, there’s a need to reflect some of the hopelessness I feel is going on.”