Margie Gillis Dance Concert at Occidental

Canadian dancer Margie Gillis has the body of an Amazon, the intensity of a maenad, the hair of Rapunzel and, alas, the taste of someone who’s been asleep nearly as long as Princess Aurora.

Watching her hurl those tawny locks and work her muscular limbs at Occidental College on Saturday, you knew you were seeing the real thing: a modern dance artist of enormous physical and emotional power. Yet Gillis’ full-out investment in her dancing could not always sustain the feeble, backdated choreography of her eight-part solo program.

“Roots of the Rhythm Remain” contrasted African and Asian movement idioms, just as “Waltzing Matilda” alternated yearning, lyrical motion and moments of painful, contorted staggering. With its passages of controlled versus abandoned dancing, the suite “How the Rosehips Quiver” developed further dichotomies--each one faultlessly embodied.

Gillis also superbly swiveled and flipped through “Slipstream,” flailed on the floor brilliantly in “Give Me Your Heart Tonight” and lent the mime-based birth (or evolution) miniature “Little Animal” spectacular conviction.

But these Gillis choreographies were essentially audition pieces: conventional, obvious calling-cards of no distinction. Pieces by Martha Clarke (“Nocturne”) and Stephanie Ballard (“Mara”) proved heavily dependent on costume-based imagery but fundamentally no more satisfying.

Gillis looks as if she could be definitive in everything from Isadora Duncan music visualizations up through the solos Merce Cunningham made for Karole Armitage--and beyond. So why is she mired in these entry-level etudes? A dancer this accomplished will always find an audience, but the suspicion lingers that Margie Gillis’ career in dance hasn’t yet begun.