Dance Reviews : Sternberg Troupe at Morgan-Wixson

Interactional drama, cutesy exhibitionism and mystic missions may seem an unwieldy aesthetic mix as choreography goes. But Donna Sternberg and Dancers, a company of four women, took the task in stride at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre.

Not everything on the three-part bill was up to par on Friday, though. “See . . . Saw,” for instance, which tried for satire but missed, turned into an embarrassingly simplistic opportunity for body display--with the dancers’ tidbits of self-deprecation compounding the problem.

It was as if their complaints of physical flaws--bowed legs, lumpy bodies--freed them to act out the high-stepping flirtations they fantasized through mimed mirror-gazing and stripping to underwear from silly short dresses that emphasized those sources of discomfort.

The movement--academic modern-dance falls to the ground outfitted with balletic extensions and turns--helped Sternberg prove that a girl child can grow up without ever losing her desire to prance and parade on a stage.

Even in 1992.

Things got better in “Dark Night,” not least because of the astutely chosen music from Arvo Part’s “Tabula Rasa” recording. Here the choreographer rose to the composer’s level, delivering out of the fugal structure an intricately layered work of upward-focused lyricism and darkly mesmerizing softness.

Even the undancerly bodies looked better here in the chosen unitards. So did the piece transcend its initially trite motifs of doom.

But it was back to silly thigh-high dresses for “Shadow Self,” a suite set to Toni Childs’ country-rock songs. Open balances punctuated the in-your-face rap style of unison maneuvers. Most interesting, however, were the two couples’ tacit love-hate scenarios and a viewer’s oblique realization that they constituted one-sex relationships.