Dance : Lewitzky Co. in Retrospective

The Bella Lewitzky Dance Company’s ongoing 25th anniversary retrospective moved to Occidental College on Friday--with curtain time at the Keck Theater coming just three hours after Lewitzky announced her resignation as artistic director of the Dance Gallery.

Whatever one’s response to this news, the performance itself proved again that Lewitzky’s modern-dance company is the only monument she’ll ever need. In “Five” and “Spaces Between” (both from 1974) and especially in “Changes and Choices” (1981), the dancing reached a level of meticulously calibrated power that no other Southern California ensemble can match.

Set to delicate, whimsical electronics by Larry A. Attaway, “Changes and Choices” initially exploited the body’s angularity--all the sharp edges, corners and sudden off-center displacements than can make people look like machines. However, the 10 Lewitzky dancers not only articulated the style brilliantly, they humanized it by incorporating their reactions to its challenges.

Each piece Friday found Lewitzky’s choreography conditioned by a distinctive scenic concept. In “Changes and Choices,” the dancers took sleeves, gloves, leggings, trunks and stretch tops from a space-age Rudi Gernreich clothesline, wearing these accessories over their white unitards. Besides providing splashes of intense color, the costume additions created points of physical emphasis that Lewitzky playfully explored: human movement seen as a spectrum of highly specific capabilities.

A moody score by Max Lifchitz helped define the sense of urban alienation shaping “Five.” Here the dancers began in anguished isolation behind tall gauze panels but gradually, fearfully ventured beyond into increasingly affirming relationships.

As formal composition, “Five” continued to dazzle with its playoffs between “inside” and “outside” activity--and, in particular, the way Lewitzky kept the choreography bouncing all over the stage even when the dancers, individually, remained rooted to one spot.

Similarly, “Spaces Between” layered the stage with dancing--but horizontally this time, as some company members moved atop a long glass panel suspended high above the floor while others mirrored their actions directly underneath.

Newell Taylor Reynolds’ setting suggested a cityscape no less than the Darleen Neel panels used in “Five,” but this metropolis contained no vestige of confinement or Angst. Instead, the full company--multiplied at the end by shadow effects--moved joyously to Cara Bradbury Marcus’ electronic sound-textures as though released into a world of infinite discovery.