Dance and Music Reviews : ‘Tracking Coyote’ at Yoga Works Studio

Just because a form of movement nourishes the dancer’s psyche doesn’t necessarily make it theatrically viable. “Tracking Coyote,” five group dances performed Saturday night at Yoga Works Studio in Santa Monica, contained the germ of powerfully primitivistic expression, an unleashing of body language and sound unfettered by self-consciousness. But the quasi-shamanistic effect of the first two pieces dribbled away into muddled images and simplistic, repetitious exercises.

Wearing a coyote mask in the title work, Ruth Gould-Goodman set the tone of concentration, control and receptivity to physical impulse. Her undulating torso, wide-legged stances and barking, exhaling noises were demonstrations of the body as medium.

In “Signatures,” most of her six women dancers (several of whom have never performed before) found a private physical focus. Rosanne Mangio, a heavy-set woman, had the ferocious, blocky immobility of a Rodin bronze. Wiry Marlene Smerling slithered about with a tense urgency. Rangy Stephanie Franz lassoed space with a long arm; Cynthia King shuddered and fluttered.

Moving together, however, these dancers seemed reticent about touching each other as if suddenly aware of taboo behavior.

But once everyone’s improvisatory impulses were out in the open, they became caricatures of themselves (E.T.-like squeals, twisted arms, clawing fingers in “Salamander”) or began to look like classroom exercises (in “Spinal Tap,” accompanied by solemn readings from Gould-Goodman’s text about the body’s path to universal consciousness).

Lacking a more coherent physical language able to represent specific actions and offer a clear range of emotive responses, the dancers’ movements failed to illuminate “Fairy Tale,” King’s “personal transformation” narrative.