MUSIC / DANCE REVIEW : Doug Elkins Trio Eclectic at LACMA

Composers with intriguing concepts of structure shared an evening with a choreographer who defies conventional notions of continuity, Wednesday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

In the final performance of its 1990/91 LACMA residency, the California E.A.R. Unit invited the New York-based Doug Elkins trio to dance during Steve Reich’s “Four Organs” (1970) and the premiere of “Chino” by E.A.R. members Amy Knoles and Dorothy Stone.

As with Merce Cunningham’s programs at UCLA two weeks ago, the music never merely served as accompaniment--and the choreography never illustrated the scores. Instead, collaborative simultaneity created coincidental linkups and, more often, artful clashes, with (for instance) Reich’s rigorously formal development of tones complimented by Elkins’ wildly unpredictable collage of random movement.

Like a brilliant film editor splicing short clips into a dazzling rhythmic display, Elkins developed a new virtuosity from inventively combined flashes of familiar movement. A break-dance or martial arts quote would suddenly terminate in an “impossible” balance and, just as suddenly, any of the three dancers might carom off into jitterbug or contact improvisation or pectoral vibrations or Hungarian folk dance.

If “Four Organs” provided a spectacular Elkins free-for-all, “Chino” showed him organizing its eclecticism for expressive purposes. The score periodically added taped speech to a lush and dreamy instrumental mix--the tapes, taken from inmates of Chino Men’s Prison, turning prisoner feelings into isolated sound bites.

The choreography proved equally layered. After a short, bravura Elkins solo (no rule of sequencing left unbroken), the piece unexpectedly developed into a tender ballroom-style duet for Susan Moran and Lisa Nicks. Elkins incorporated partnering ploys from the tango, waltz, fox-trot, jitterbug, paso doble--plus a few jazzy high kicks. But this was no showpiece. The women’s relationship remained the issue, explicitly defined more than once in a caress of devastating intimacy.

With its marchlike cadences and dramatic shifts of mood, Michael Gordon’s “Strange Quiet” (1987) might have inspired Elkins too--but it received a danceless performance on Wednesday, its increasingly dense and unyielding rhythms powerfully realized in the playing by six members of the E.A.R. Unit.

John Zorn’s “Cobra” used a complex game plan to launch contrasting improvisational sequences involving everything from conventional instruments to noisemakers, voices and even an alarm clock. Eight players participated, with contributions ranging from screamed insults to a definitively wistful rendition of “Frosty the Snowman.” You want chamber music demystified? Seek no further.