Dance : Pacific Ensemble’s Mixed Bill at Cal State L.A.

Although the entire repertory of the Pacific Dance Ensemble, a three-year-old company directed by Danielle Shapiro, consists of new works from various choreographers, new and innovative were hardly the bywords of the mixed bill presented at Cal State Los Angeles during the weekend.

However dissimilar in style, the three premieres on the program suffered from the uneven skills of the ensemble as well as a lack of choreographic invention.

Easily the most energetic of the trio of new works, Stephanie Gilliland’s “Spell: Still Creating the World,” explored touch, communion and dissonance among a community of nine dancers. Yet, despite a vibrant original score by Butch Rovan and several well-orchestrated scenes of contrasting formations, the piece, and certainly the dancers themselves, lacked the focus of Gilliland’s own electric solos familiar to Southland audiences. Hae Kyung Lee’s “Saiya” featured three women and a man in white underwear-like garments, laboring under the specter of some unseen oppression. Vaguely feminist in the power exchanges between the genders, the dance used slow, tortured moves to suggest injured and fragile states of mind.

“Touch Memory Landscape” by the Vietnamese-born Long Nguyen was the most problematic of the three new dances. While the provocative text--from “The Arc” by Frank Bidart--spoke of lost arms, the care and bandaging of an amputee’s stump and painful remembrances of limbs past, the abstract dance did little to address this subject.

Previously reviewed repertory pieces--Gilberte Meunier’s “Crow” and Tina Gerstler’s “Personal Statements/Talking to Myself”--completed the program.