DANCE AND MUSIC REVIEWS : UCLA Makes Its Commitment Clear

In the midst of a transition to a new academic profile, the UCLA Dance Department demonstrated a reassuring commitment to modern dance creativity and technical excellence in the 29th annual program by its faculty and student company, Friday in Room 200 of the Dance Building.

Guest choreographer Janis Brenner collected anecdotes from her multi-generational cast for “The Memory of All That,” an uneven but generally persuasive text-based piece boasting a mellow commissioned score by Howard Richman. Gestural motion and group-bonding processes reinforced the spoken reminiscences, with Brenner placing the various stories in the context of physical relationships. Linked together, the silent partner(s) shaped the mood and rhythm of the speaker through movement and, especially, weight.

“Stop for Tea and Gas” found guest choreographer Dan Wagoner hitching together music by Henryk Gorecki, Philip Glass and Kris Kristofferson in an unlikely suite accompanying a compulsively antic, ultimately enervating exploration of contemporary spirituality. References to religious figures from many cultures occurred in both the Allen Ginsberg poems of the Glass section and in Wagoner’s dance images, but his relentlessly twitchy choreography looked less inspired by Christ or Krishna than St. Vitus.

Happily, faculty choreographer Ronald Brown provided balm for the eyes with his conventional but unfailingly graceful woman’s septet “Heaven’s Gate” to music by Oregon. Like Brenner and Wagoner, he pushed the technical capabilities of the UCLA Dance Company to the limit in certain instances, but his sense of musicality offered the dancers a lifeline that also sustained him in the mercurial showpiece solo “Save You” (music composed and performed by Lisbeth Scott).

Stan Pressner contributed atmospheric lighting designs to this program of premieres.