MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : ‘Woman’: Waking Up Is Hard to Do

Threaded throughout the multimedia scenic patchwork of “La Brea Woman” by Collage Dance Theatre is the idea that evolution means pollution and that a prehistoric woman sprung live from the tar pits embodies our nobler, “natural” selves. A man in a suit might try to put her in a pink ‘50s formal, make her wear earrings and rope her into a museum, but she can escape, naked and mute and-- peaceful ?

Just a guess really, based on movement clues and the pseudo-epic spoken text (a poem by Merridawn Duckler) on Thursday. A homey museum guide character (nicely played by Pamela Dunlap) speaks of a 9,000-year-old woman reborn, with words like victim , violent , pain and memory recurring.

Choreographer Heidi Duckler has made great use of the airy, steel and brick Ivy Substation in Culver City. Musicians create a percussion-driven, drifty synthesizer score under two exposed staircases, dancers appear in second-story windows, climb onto landings or disappear into an elevator.

But, however alluring the images, they remain enigmatic, a troubling trail of symbols that want to lead somewhere. Dancers in business suits grin and pose before starting to tussle greedily on the ground. An under-rehearsed group of young women in black unitards does what looks like the frug and mashed potato with sloping (prehistoric?) spines. La Brea woman herself (Elizabeth Nairn) slithers, growls and elegantly waves her arms. What’s a natural phenomenon to do--evolve like the rest of us?

* “La Brea Woman,” Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City, tonight at 8, $15. (818) 788-5113.