DANCE REVIEW : A ‘Canopy’ Stands Out With Acrobatic Flourish in ‘Moves’

On the opening “Prime Moves” program at LACE on Friday, locally based choreographer Lisa Lock danced a solo titled “Canopy” to music by Leigh Ann Gillespie--a solo full of twitchy, insectile limb-spasms and low, crablike scamperings across the floor. By the closing “Prime Moves” performance on Sunday, “Canopy” had become a duet for Lock and Clyde Howell: the same only different.

If the major movement-events of the piece seemed unchanged, Howell’s presence created new opportunities for gymnastic interplay: a passage in which Lock rode on his back, for example, and one in which he lifted her, let her slide to the floor and then collapsed slowly over her. Strongly performed in both versions, “Canopy” offered a number of unusual positions for dancing and unorthodox methods of locomotion--plus a potent sense of atmosphere.

As such, it outclassed the other new duet Sunday: “To My Heart,” in which Bay Area choreographer Robert Moses used a piano arrangement of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” to re-sequence hoary jazz-dance platitudes for himself and L.A. dancer/choreographer Winifred R. Harris.

On the same program, two of Harris’ own pieces had defined a deeper, more complex view of women than the saucy babe she portrayed here. Moreover, for all his balletic expertise, Moses couldn’t make his flashy lifts look effortless, much less impassioned. Not really terrible, but certainly the most inconsequential item in the series.

Completing the program: previously reviewed works by Harris, Laurence Blake, Eleo Pomare and Laura Elaine Ellis.