DANCE REVIEW : ‘Unidentified’ at L.A. Photo Center

A multimedia collaboration in progress, “Unidentified” appeared in a bare-bones, workshop version Friday at the Los Angeles Photography Center: no Liz Larner setting and not much consistent power in the performances by the locally based Tina Gerstler/Danceworks company.

Still, the five-section work offered plenty of interest--starting with Brad Dutz’s Jungian-taped score, which layered deep-toned Asian chant, Latin rhythms, bluesy sensuality and shrill bird cries in a volatile, atmospheric instrumental wash. If that doesn’t sound like Los Angeles, what could?

In the opening section, the six dancers constantly covered their own and one another’s eyes. In the finale, they looked out from their despairing, insular perspectives toward something they definitely didn’t want to see. In between: mostly grim, furtive and compulsive duets, with same-sex relationships strongly in focus.

Gerstler’s modern-dance choreography proved far more advanced than formerly in expanding expressive gesture into whole-body statements. Indeed, she seems to have evolved a quicksilver movement style full of exciting stretches, scoops and spirals from one level to another, and she exploited it in formal sequences of considerable sophistication.

However, transitions between psychological portraiture (dancers-as-characters) and abstract patterning (dancers-as-design-implements) frequently looked arbitrary, although she imaginatively fused the two in her central sequence, “The Game.”

Here, depicting a dance rehearsal, she called out commands to her company members: “Leo, go back. Frank, try it again.” The approach, however, proved highly stylized, with Gerstler continually circling the stage while speaking and the dancers immediately trying-it-again, over and over, until the dance doubled back on itself in so many overlapping permutations that the result seemed something like watching an acrobat keep a line of plates forever spinning on poles.

James P. Hunter II was credited as lighting designer, but this was definitely a low-tech engagement. Company dancers included Frank Joseph Adams, Sun Mi Jin, Jean Landry, Leo Tee, Kate Warren and Gerstler herself.