DANCE REVIEW : Second ‘Kaleidoscope’ Program at Cal State L.A.

Coincidental linkups between pieces gave special interest to the nine-part “Dance Kaleidoscope” performance Sunday afternoon at Cal State L.A. In this second 1992 program of the annual showcase series, you could watch multiple refractions of the same themes and movement priorities.

Both Carole Valleskey and Christopher Aponte, for example, mounted crusades to rehabilitate ballet lyricism, Valleskey by turning the swoony conventions of the 19th-Century supported adagio into the fantasy expression of very ordinary young people. Aponte, in turn, appropriated those conventions for an intimate male pas de deux full of implications about dying young in the age of AIDS.

Danced suavely by Valleskey and Greg Engle, her “Local Hero” used music by Mark Knopfler in solos and duets contrasting the perfection of dream lovers with the uncertainty of a new relationship. Strongly performed by Aponte and Andreaus Folsom, Aponte’s “Adagietto” used over-familiar Mahler to accompany a very physical statement of agonizing spiritual needs.

A crisis of faith also preoccupied Rudy Perez in his solo for the intense Jeffrey Grimaldo, “Losing the Light” (music by Pergolesi). Here, as in the classic Perez solo “Coverage,” shedding clothes allowed a man to contact his deepest feelings.

Walter Kennedy and Diane Vivona also stripped to their underwear in their mostly gestural duet “White, Sincere, Romantic,” but only to get comically entangled in the discarded clothes. Accompanied by a Larry A. Attaway soundscore, they satirized the confusions of the singles scene by roping themselves together--and every time they took off a garment, it ended up on a kind of clothesline strung between them.

The manipulation of ropes and garments became a choreographic subtheme of the program, with Alice Lo gracefully swirling long scarves in the air throughout her classical Chinese solo “Goddess of Clouds,” and the glamorous flamenco artist Angelita developing an overpowering fixation on a red and black shawl in a “Solea” choreographed by La Tati. Roll over, Nijinsky: Your Faune has met his match in passionate fetishism. Alas, Angelita’s subsequent partnership with Alfredo Aja in her own “Alegrias” proved far less eventful.

With ropes dangling from hands and feet, Lori DuPeron of the It Squad lashed and flailed impressively through “Ties That Bind,” a postmodern solo weakened by an eclectic tape mix that muffled her spoken text to incoherence.

Filled with sudden hurtling falls, DuPeron’s choreography defined physical risk as home turf for contemporary dance, finding its complement in Mehmet Memo Sander’s brilliant “Board Stiff,” which featured the increasingly daring manipulation of a 6-by-8-foot wooden platform. Sander’s neo-gymnastic quartet also proved the largest-scale work on a program of mostly solos and duets.

Completing the bill: Naomi Goldberg’s “Romanian Folksongs,” a sensitive women’s trio recently reviewed in these pages.

This “Dance Kaleidoscope” program will be repeated Friday evening, with a final slate of ballet, modern, jazz and tap scheduled for Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.