Dance Reviews : Bike’s Modern Troupe Exults in Movement

Nowadays, a single-gender organization often has connotations that were not apparent before. But one can look high and low for signs of intent at Benita Bike’s DanceArt, a modern company for women only, without finding much of a raison d’etre .

At least that was the case Saturday when Bike, an East Coast transplant, presented her four-member troupe in its first full-evening of works at the Los Angeles Photography Center.

In other words, there was no discernible feminist statement, no sense of minority protest (minority defined as unequal treatment), no historical overview. Unless, that is, the overly well-fed dancers (who look like wholesome, Midwestern farm girls) deliver some sort of message in their very amplitude.

No, what Bike seems to follow is an admirable penchant for pure dance movement. Although a program note for “Little Dances for Women” speaks about “revealing different aspects of femaleness,” most of it could pass as unisex.

A duet, the work begins as a series unison semaphores--wholly engaging in their kaleidoscopic cleverness. Along the way these semaphores speed up, slow down, turn acrobatic, and finally, to a brass fanfare (“Entrance of the Toreadors”), Pauline Duhig does a solo mocking the music’s grandeur.

But choreographer Bike gets caught up in steps and patterns devised for their own physical sake. However well-crafted, they leave some viewers unsated.

There was energy and conviction, though, in “Percussion Suite” with its jungle rhythms and fringe-adorned unitards; and nicely saucy Renaissance touches in the routines of “Un Petit Divertissement.”

The most dramatic and compelling moments, however, came in “Le Tombeau de Rameau,” a Baroque suite that surveys the choreographer’s facility with many styles and theatrical situations.

This was especially so in the Limonesque solo (a la “Moor’s Pavanne”) danced so well by Lisa Herlinger. It is a welcome reminder of the illustrious modern dance past.