MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : Oguri and Renzoku Make a Splash in the Watercourt

The Watercourt at California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles is a powerful, attention-grabbing challenge to a choreographer. It has an alluring natural artifice, with its computer-controlled waterfalls and placid onyx pools, surrounded by high-rises, geometric scaffolding and greenery. Call it a sort of urban glen.

Fortunately, Oguri and his company Renzoku practice a complimentary form of natural artifice, called butoh. In a free Friday night program, dancers vacillated interestingly between what we might identify as human, plant and animal movement. With the sounds of lapping water, low-flying planes and Paul Chavez’s always evocative taped electronic sound-scapes, the atmosphere was pleasantly stimulating.

For his new solo “Waters,” Oguri moved gingerly at the water’s edge, with occasional quick tightening and loosening of joints and limbs. Often using the outward edges of his feet, he alternately looked like a puppet, or a drunk, or a newly born child.

The same potential for shifting perspectives--drawn from movement that suggests contrasting qualities at the same time--dominated “Drift,” made for the Watercourt last summer. It began with grave ceremonial beauty as Jamie Burris, Dona Leonard, Kaoru Sasaki and Roxanne Steinberg drifted across the almost knee-deep main pool, wearing gauzy black tunics and carrying white day lilies. In formal black suits, Oguri and Boaz Barkan also waded in, as movements and clusters of dancers evolved and devolved.

Descriptive oxymorons came to mind constantly: It was awkward gracefulness, waking somnambulism, tender harshness, careless exactitude. “Drift” ends exuberantly when dancers frolic in suddenly rushing water with child-like, primate-like movement and strangled screams.

“Traveling Light,” a 1994 Morleigh Steinberg film of landscapes and solo dancing was also shown. But unlike the live performers, the film (on three smallish screens) was dwarfed by the semi-natural wonders of urban landscaping.