DANCE REVIEW : Choreographers Offer Four Premieres of Obscure Works

The first five minutes of Dawn Stoppiello’s new “Six to the End” take place virtually in darkness, an image that became an unintentional metaphor for much of the hermetic work on the “4 X Four” program Sunday at the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood.

The title actually should have been “4 by Four by Four” because the program consisted of four new works by four choreographers working to four original scores. In addition to Stoppiello, the choreographers were Nan Friedman, Irene Feigenheimer and Christine Sang, who worked to music, respectively, by Mark Coniglio, Rick Ford, Matt Kaplowitz and Rolfe Kent.

Described as a work in progress, Stoppiello’s piece fortunately abandoned its obscure dream-state opening, in which the choreographer moved furniture props around as MaryHunter Ellegood and Robin Ziemer engaged in slow-motion balances and other acrobatic combinations, to shift to interesting movement variation tasks, all to Coniglio’s atmospheric music.

Friedman’s “Trace” relied almost entirely upon movement resources to exploit supportive and antagonistic partnering. It was danced to Ford’s moody sound washes, however, without much differentiating force among the various push-pull elements by Scot Hendricks and Linda Lehovec (replacing the injured Friedman).

Bambi Anderson appeared with Feigenheimer in her “Rewind, Refocus--Shift,” whose abstract follow-the-leader movement ideas could scarcely support intimations of relationship and memory between two women. Kaplowitz wrote an appealing chamber score, however.

Sang’s solo, “ ‘Flaming June’: A Woman Stuck in a Painting,” remained utterly obscure as the choreographer’s self-absorbed movement demands delineated the character in a virtually autistic state. Kent created a suitably episodic and uninvolving score.