DANCE REVIEW : ‘Kaleidoscope’ Takes Varied Paths With Varied Success

Beginning with a fake antique from Fresno and ending with anarchic energies from Riverside, “Dance Kaleidoscope ‘94” offered a second program of really drastic diversity at Cal State L.A. on Sunday. (It repeats Friday.)

Pride of place on the seven-part bill belonged to two dark, forceful and complex contemporary works previously reviewed in these pages: Winifred R. Harris’ trio “Like a Deer in Headlights” for Between Lines and Naomi Goldberg’s quartet from “American Studies” for Los Angeles Modern Dance and Ballet.

Modern dance was also strongly represented by Katja Beisanz’s “Legacy,” a solo recalling in speech and gesture-based motion the loss of her family’s homestead in a forest fire. Personal and homespun, the piece would be even more affecting if the text were spoken by the dancer, instead of on tape.

Also responding to loss, Charles Maple’s “Angel of the Abyss” for Pasadena Dance Theatre piled up grandiose pictorial effects in a Eurotrash ritual set to the Mozart Requiem. However, only the passages dominated by the superbly expressive Gilma Bustillo matched the power of the music and thus fulfilled the quintet’s mission: honoring the memory of the late Gregory Osborne (a colleague of Maple’s at American Ballet Theatre).

Susan Rose’s cryptic, downbeat trio “A Prior Arrangement” also seemed a kind of lament--perhaps for a world that grinds down women as relentlessly as the propulsive, nonstop athleticism of the work oppressed the stoic Kelli King. By the final pileup, King’s endurance had become heroic, as if she’d survived Bosnia, Rwanda and more.

In contrast, Faith Jensen-Ismay made women into brain-dead victims of cellulite obsession in her witless parody of fitness mania, “Image-A-Nation” for Mojalet Dance Collective. Some of her mime ideas looked promising, but her inability to expand them into purposeful group choreography undercut her hard-working seven-woman cast.

Replacing Ballet Pacifica, the Fresno Ballet offered Anton Dolin’s familiar “Le Pas de Quatre,” a 1941 showpiece evoking (without much accuracy) a ballet equivalent of “The Three Tenors” event circa 1845.

It requires contemporary dancers to impersonate four celebrated ballerinas of the Romantic age and, in recent years, has served as a vehicle for our own classical icons. (A new videotape, for example, features Nina Ananiashvili of the Bolshoi, Darci Kistler of New York City Ballet, Rose Gad of the Royal Danish Ballet and Tatiana Terekhova of the Kirov.)

On Sunday, Fresno Ballet could muster neither stars nor stylists and, for all the good taste in Don Bradburn’s staging, it provided a decidedly lackluster opening to the program.

* “Dance Kaleidoscope,” Program B, State Playhouse, Cal State L.A., 5151 State University Drive, Friday, 8 p.m. Program C, Saturday, 8 p.m. and next Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Program D, John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E., Hollywood, Aug. 6, 10 a.m.; Program E, Aug. 6, 8 p.m. $15, (213) 466-1767.