DANCE REVIEW : Alwin Nikolais’ Latest Samples of Legerdemain

It’s all done with mirrors: the latest example of legerdemain by that genial wizard of modern dance, Alwin Nikolais. But it’s also something of a sly joke at his own expense.

Introduced locally in Royce Hall, UCLA, on Thursday as the opening work of a three-night engagement by Nikolais Dance Theatre, “Crucible” (1985) hides 10 dancers beneath low mirror panels. Sometimes they raise only a single finger above the top edge of the looking glass, sometimes a leg or two, eventually whole, bare upper torsos.

Early on, the piece is exclusively whimsical, as hands behave like puppet-creatures and the reflections below merely embellish the playful confrontations. But with the addition of colored lights and slide projections--and the development of horizontal limb-motifs that merge perfectly with their mirror images--Nikolais takes “Crucible” into the realm of awesome kaleidoscopic abstraction.

The joke comes from Nikolais’ identification over the past 40 years with a style of movement based on intricate muscular isolations--an emphasis on body parts rather than full-body statements. “Crucible,” of course, may be the ultimate essay in that style, since it reduces the Nikolais dancers to disembodied pieces.

A joke of another sort is the 1987 parody “Blank on Blank” (pun definitely intended), which pretends to be the kind of piece that Nikolais has always said he’ll never, ever do: the gesture-based contemporary social and psychological expose. Here are 10 very unpleasant urban types, dressed in white versions of streetwear, picking their noses, slumping indolently against one another, posing inanely for snapshots, lashing out in spasms of anger (the action sometimes runs backwards and forwards like a loop of film), all to a documentary sound-score: dripping water, demolition noise, etc. The work fairly oozes contempt for people who take such pretentious nonsense seriously.

In contrast to this nasty novelty, the familiar “Graph” (1984) offers classic Nikolais values: scenic metaphors (grids resembling giant spider webs), dancer metamorphoses (washes of colored light that isolate cast members in shifting, individual auras), electronic music (by David Gregory this time, instead of Nikolais himself) and special effects (a strobe-lit finale). Plus dancing of meticulous control--especially the fearsome contortions performed by Sheila Lehner and Sara Hook against plastic panels.

More dance gymnastics (a relatively recent Nikolais preoccupation) turn up in “Contact” (1985). It begins with rhythmic walking and movement flurries against that rhythm whenever dancers connect. Soon, however, it settles into an exploration of complex partnering gambits, capped by a demanding, lift-laden duet for Alberto Del Saz and James Murphy.

Lehner, however, gets the hardest, most unorthodox showpiece: a solo in which she’s seated on the floor, leaning back, and her legs drift upward as if they had a life of their own, forcing her body into increasingly impossible contortions. Quite amazing--and it’s NOT done with mirrors.