DANCE REVIEW : Rocco’s ‘Steel and Grace’

Trying to get a handle on humankind and reduce all experience to a universal truth can be daunting.

But don’t accuse choreographer Nola Rocco, who held forth Friday with a nine-member ensemble at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall, of thinking small or being self-absorbed.

“Of steel and grace,” her 90-minute work sponsored by the dance department’s “UPSTARTS” series, had plenty to recommend it despite over-arching ambitions.

The memorable moments, it turns out, were incidental to the central focus: an identity search. That, the choreographer inadvertently left to the inspired writings of everyone from Alexander Hamilton to Alice Walker, these texts adorning the program sheet.

When it came to the enduring images, however, Rocco relied, smartly, on matching a varied palette of evocative music to each Expressionist set piece: a symphonic excerpt of Benjamin Britten spoke only wistfully of the dancers’ sorrow and loneliness, for instance--thus strengthening the feeling.

And the cascading of Sun-Mi Jin’s black sheet of hair seemed choreographed for subliminal effect, while a ladder on wheels, manipulated with a sense of whimsy, found the perfect accompaniment in Satie’s lightly adventurous piano music.

Equally strong, if not more so, was the enlistment of the principal dancers’ specific talents. Hawkin Chan, impersonating a Chinese woman in a long, slim period skirt and carrying a tall parasol, dazzled. He also looked like the real thing, his hips swaying just so and head cocking to the side with dramatic curiosity.

The other show-stopper was Michael Cobb’s charades game, played with delectably concise mime to an uncomprehending innocent whose voice came from backstage. His Chaplinesque “King of the Chairs” routine was also hilarious.