MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : Louis and Brubeck at Royce Hall

While so many other choreographers stay musically locked into their industrial drones, electronic oscillations or minimalist grids, there’s Murray Louis--who knows what a little live collaboration can do.

Like Louis, Dave Brubeck and Quartet are also survivors from the ‘50s. Combining modern dance and progressive jazz? Why not?

In fact, there was every good reason for the near-capacity crowd to like what Louis and Brubeck had in store Thursday at Royce Hall, UCLA (continuing through tonight): the genuine, vibrant interaction of music and movement, the smoothly segueing production style that fused sight and sound into an organic whole.

Because the musicians became part of the visual frame and because their mostly upbeat playing was so rousing, the tone of the evening seemed informal, even spontaneous.

The light-hearted though inventive result may have looked more like an entertainment than a representation of so-called art-dance; it was thoroughly engaging, however, which is more than can be said of the exercises in routinized solemnity that often parade under the performing-arts banner.

Not to belabor the point, Louis’ new piece, “Act One,” turned out to be a suite of waltzes, rhumbas, rags and bossa novas parceled out as duets, trios, etc. to his eight terrific dancers. Besides being theatrically sophisticated in its decor of bright, primary colors, clever lighting and ever-changing abstract backdrops, it captured many subtleties of human interaction in the choreography. Call this genre show dance with a difference.

And just as each dancer projected individuality, so did each member of the quartet--especially clarinetist Bill Smith with his limpid tone, and Brubeck fils (Chris), a virtuoso caricaturist on trombone. Brubeck pere got to interpolate his instantly identifiable “Blue Rondo a la Turk” with customary elan and, in the 1984 “Four Brubeck Pieces,” his signature: “Take Five.”

The indefatigable Louis, at 61, offered two solos--still validating himself as the Marcel Marceau of modern dance, and signaling the source of his energetic, sometimes mime-derived choreography for ensemble.