Dance and Music Reviews : Jamison Project Shows Technical Prowess at Royce

Judith Jamison turned her head slightly and beamed one glinting, amused eye at the audience as she led her flock of 12 dancers in the evangelical fervor of the final piece on the Friday night program at Royce Hall.

It was the end of a long evening of works, and despite some meandering choreography, the members of her year-old Jamison Project had distinguished themselves with intensely felt lyric energy and technical prowess.

The centerpiece was Jamison’s new “Forgotten Time,” to the unearthly harmonies of “Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares.” The seven-part work is graced with stately sculptural imagery and an atmosphere of primal ritual, in which sharply lit dancers in near-transparent costumes move on a darkened stage.

Achingly slow deep backbends that spring like boomerangs into frontal body falls are the punctuation for a series of holds and poses, including deep hunkering unison squats and monumental statue formations: women riding on men’s shoulders. Muscular Jonathan Riseling and willowy Danny Clark partnered each other in a sequence that combined extraordinary tenderness with powerhouse athleticism.

Jamison’s “Tease” incorporated an earlier version of that two-man partnership into a party-time sex-war scenario that lost its edge by rambling on too long. Also on the UCLA program were Jamison’s early (1986), frankly Alvin Ailey-derivative “Time Out,” Kris World’s brief “Read Matthew 11:28”--and an odd solo created for Jamison by Garth Fagan, who also devised the top-heavy, poncho-like costume.

“Scene Seen” is very spare. When the body isn’t sputtering in frenzy, it serves as a still backdrop for movements of the arms and hands. If anyone can imbue the snap of a wrist with dramatic presence, it is Jamison. But this dry exercise seems remote from the full-bodied emotional intensity that is her hallmark as a dancer.