MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : Loretta Livingston

A program of brief pieces made in different years to dissimilar accompaniments seldom achieves the unity of a full-length composition. However, the four modern-dance works presented by Loretta Livingston and Dancers on Saturday at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre complemented one another so perfectly, you’d guess they were conceived with an omnibus evening in mind.

Not only did they all explore the mystery of human relationships, but each also developed variations on the same structure: formal movement rituals yielding (sometimes only briefly) to statements of untamed individuality.

A former leading dancer in the Bella Lewitzky company, Livingston has long been an extraordinarily thoughtful choreographer, adept at defining subtle emotional states through movement nuances yet unafraid of using non-dance vocabularies for contrast, emphasis and, especially, to convey the vigor of life too often refined away in the dance-making process.

Weaknesses previously noted in her intense 1983 women’s duet “Birdnest” and the 1984 big-band group romp “Invitations” still existed on Saturday but mattered less when these dances belonged to a larger pattern. Moreover, the deep interpersonal communion depicted in the 1986 love duet “Paper/Scissors/Rock” now helped focus the yearning evident in Livingston’s other works--and threw into high relief the sardonic, manipulative sexuality in her newest creation.

Set, ironically, to music by Handel, Livingston’s potent, purposeful “From Apogee to Perigee” immediately established her familiar conceptual oppositions: stylized positional rigidity (arms held out from the body and bent up at the elbow, the body bent to the side) versus almost documentary gestural action (people shoving each other out of the way).

As her five dancers increasingly moved in a vortex around both objects of desire and figures of control, the need to be touched that figured so prominently in each of Livingston’s other dances became redefined as erotic consumerism, a dirty joke even to the relentlessly cruising participants. The final image: a nasty silent laugh.

If the program made a case for the uncertainties of monogamy over the corruptions of promiscuity (moral rearmament, late-’80s style), it also confirmed Livingston’s growing prowess as a company leader. It’s no secret that she and her husband, David Plettner (another former Lewitzky dancer), are remarkably versatile, accomplished, appealing--but all the dancing on Saturday suggested that her five-member ensemble should at last be counted among the finest in Southern California.