DANCE REVIEW : Strong Women, Sensitive Men in ‘Kaleidoscope’

Showcasing men of feeling and women of action, the second, mostly modern “Dance Kaleidoscope” program of 1993 brought a number of potent statements of sensibility to Cal State Los Angeles on Sunday.

Four women’s quartets traced the evolution in contemporary dance from artmaking to social priorities, beginning with the basically academic but increasingly exploratory formalism of Patricia Sandback’s “Bach Dances.” Fluent and tasteful, the choreography needed stronger dancing than it received.

Like Sandback’s suite, Naomi Goldberg’s brooding, inventive “In the Dominion of Light” (skillfully performed by members of Los Angeles Modern Dance and Ballet) established a style, then stretched beyond it--in Goldberg’s case, toward a hard-won sense of shared space as opposed to the insular synchrony of its earlier sections.

The sleek sisterhood of Karen J. Woo’s sharp, propulsive “Floorplay” exulted in athletic prowess, with Woo testing the stamina of her Dim Sum dancers without ever sullying the glossy, upscale Orange County or Westside style of femininity they defined.

In contrast, Stephanie Gilliland’s assaultive “Coriolanus” proved to be strictly from downtown--the demure dresses (like the Shakespearean title) something of a nasty joke, the floor-slamming, bone-crunching style a proletarian defiance of traditional notions of womanhood. Forget wings on their backs, these ladies had pads on their knees and they owned the stage by right of conquest.

Complementing all the female muscle-power on the program: the sensitivity of two male soloists. The brief, focused movement etudes of Claudia Schneiderman Ross’ “Three Days Later” showcased the extraordinary fluidity and refinement of John Pennington, a dancer in the Bella Lewitzky company.

Exploiting acceleration to the point of fragmentation, Leo Tee’s “Epilogue” traced cycles of grief with a disarming selflessness: Tee seemed not so much possessed by emotion here as wholly obliterated by it. (The work was dedicated to the late Los Angeles dance artist David Leahy.)

A similar feeling of loss pervaded “Songs From a Quiet Place,” Francisco Martinez’s artful lieder ballet, the only piece in which men and women danced together. Unfortunately, the classical purity of Martinez’s choreography remained largely beyond his five dancers and the work suffered from a pileup of interpretive and even creative compromises.