Dance Reviews : Elgart Program at El Camino College

Authentically Expressionist at its best, tiresomely pop-psychological at its worst, Sarah Elgart’s new piece, “Maybe He Go,” was the highlight of her company’s program in the Campus Theatre at El Camino College, Saturday night.

Antony Balcena--blessed with a mobile face and sensitivity to the weight and pacing of gesture--was a man alternatively beguiled and tormented (most vividly when his hand buzzed in nervous ellipses around the side of his head) by momentary encounters with people from his past.

Shuffling around him in a circle were an exhorting, preacher-father figure (Brad Fazekas in a broad-brimmed hat distractingly reminiscent of Graham’s “Appalachian Spring”), a tense mother (Sharon Kerr), a Hula Hoop-toting sister (Pamela Heffler, who otherwise had nothing particularly childlike to do), a self-absorbed, tightrope-walking lover (Amelia Rudolph), and a dice-shaking con man (Eric Rochin, who distilled snake oil into a confiding posture and palm-open hand).

Things took a downward turn toward the end, when a circus-like bevy of strollers added an ersatz Fellini-esque touch. Soon thereafter, the shufflers began to groan in unison and chant in a simple-mindedly confrontational way.

Still, the craft and restraint of the piece was welcome after the unconvincing angst of “Pearls Before Swine,” a video, and the uneven tone of last year’s “Loveletters.”