Music and Dance Reviews : Birtschansky Dance Drama at Odyssey

Nadine Birtschansky’s “Signed Modigliani” depicts conflicts tormenting one of the century’s great bohemian painters and sculptors.

Recently given its premiere at CalArts and now at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles, this skillfully performed one-act dance drama also mixes formal choreography with gestural movement by actors--alternating physical poetry and prose to reflect different states of consciousness.

Program notes about Modigliani refer to “his wife, Jane . . .,” simplifying both the woman’s name and her place in the artist’s life. (He never married and several women bore him children, among them Jeanne Hebuterne, who killed herself on the day of his funeral.)

Onstage, that life becomes increasingly marginalized as Birtschansky and director John Lant focus on characters who represent Modigliani’s warring drives: Carmen, the long-limbed embodiment of his artistic vision, versus Predominant Demon, the bare-chested incarnation of depravity who cackles menacingly even more often than he thrusts out his pelvis.

Unfortunately, the melodramatic Doppelgang-bang and murder of Carmen prove far less compelling than undeveloped episodes tracing the relationship between Jane (the coolly eloquent Sachi Parker) and Modigliani himself (the intense Mike Michaud). Even more disappointing is the way Birtschansky resorts to the claptrap of theatrical Expressionism instead of borrowing Modigliani’s visual symbols--or inventing her own.

It’s all here, only slightly camouflaged: the malevolent clown, the stranger-in-the-mirror, the sexual Walpurgisnacht , Dr. Coppelius and his Coppelia. Roger Bellon’s powerful score freshens the cliches as much as possible, and there’s one inventive scene with Modigliani turning clay into a living entity.

Otherwise, “Signed Modigliani” gropes and strains to communicate its insights about the link between life and art, as if such superior achievements as Frederick Ashton’s “Illuminations” (on Rimbaud) had never existed.