Dance Review : San Diego’s 3’s Company at Occidental College

The veteran San Diego-based 3’s Company brought high standards of execution and accompaniment to arid, curiously static modern-dance etudes by artistic directors Jean Isaacs and Nancy McCaleb Sunday in Occidental College’s Thorne Hall.

Most of the pieces went absolutely nowhere. McCaleb’s “No Shade” showed five people listlessly wallowing in piles of foam cups--and, yes, that image did suggest that our pollution and social malaise are inextricably linked. Trouble is, McCaleb found nothing for her dancers to do that deepened or expanded her point. She merely kept making the same statement that had been fully realized in the first few seconds.

Similarly, Isaacs’ “Hoedown at the Boneyard,” depicted a sleazy crowd being mindlessly brutal, but even the use of exotic-flavored music by Ashwin Batish couldn’t freshen hand-me-down sex-war and gang-fight concepts.

In these works, choreography proved almost besides the point--and certainly arbitrary--since McCaleb and Isaacs seemed more interested in creating novel opening tableaux than sustaining movement through time.

McCaleb’s extended, fanciful “Swamp” had a charming score (by the group called trom-bown, with a lot of help from J. S. Bach) and an arresting spoken narrative but, again, only sketchy dance embellishments. Isaacs’ brief, spiritual “Untitled Duet” depended more on fancy lighting and smoke-clouds than on the excellent Faith Jensen-Ismay and Terri Shipman. Why make redemption through faith an offstage special effect? Hasn’t Isaacs seen Ailey dancers positively glow with fervor?

In “Tabula Rasa,” Isaacs used bold lighting changes to define new paths and targets-of-focus for her ensemble--an intriguing premise that, this time, she varied resourcefully enough to suggest many different states of feeling.

Nearly as satisfying: McCaleb’s propulsive “Mirror of Simple Souls,” which looked something like the “West Side Story” dance at the gym restaged for monks, but remained invigorating despite questions about her milieu.

Clearly Isaacs and McCaleb can produce coherent, middle-of-the-road modern dance on occasion, but most of the time Sunday, they settled for flashy spectacle and noble intentions. Unfortunately, foam cups, billowing smoke and plastic lotuses are no substitute for movement eloquence. 3’s Company needs to dump the knickknacks and get back to basics.