Dance Reviews : CalArts Departments Join Creative Forces

It may be just coincidence, but when the dance and jazz departments at CalArts join creative forces following local collaborations by Murray Louis and Dave Brubeck (masters of the same arts), such pairing is probably not a fluke.

And when the music in question is that of the late Charlie Mingus, whose progressive jazz included composed forms, the stresses and moods of the musical sources are varied enough to stimulate a wide choreographic response. (A lot more, incidentally, than Karole Armitage could muster for her Mingus ballet during the Los Angeles Festival.)

If anything, the works by Cristyne Lawson, Kurt Weinheimer and Rebecca Bobele in “Mingus Moves,” Thursday on the Valencia campus, shared a characteristic clarity: clean, precise, muscular movement that gave control--rather than whimsy, for instance--highest priority.

Neither was there much that seemed casual in Mingus’ music. In fact, the outstanding Jazz Ensemble, led expertly by James Newton, played “Sue’s Changes” strictly as a chamber jazz piece, one that suggested not only such progressive compositional techniques as Ivesian polyphony but a whole range of musical devices.

Most often the choreography took its atmospheric cues from the music. Thus Bobele’s “Tijuana Gift Shop,” costumed in bright play togs, matched exuberant movement to the tune’s upbeat energy. But elsewhere, as in Weinheimer’s “Tonight at Noon,” eight darkly lit men did slow-motion floor aerobics and body linkages to the fast, urgent, dense harmonies.

But the sense of the music came across best and most creatively in Bobele’s “Cryin’ Blues,” which featured Laurence Blake and Weinheimer. Blake, especially, captured the rhapsodic slinkiness that is quintessential jazz, but both virtuosos--wearing trousers and sweaters--insinuated their way through the dramatically full-out walks, runs, turns and semi-somersaults with real heat.