WEEKEND REVIEW : Dance : Diavolo Company Performs Daring, Creative Program

At its best, the work of Jacques Heim’s Diavolo Dance Theatre is as exciting and distinctive as anything created in Southern California, using the high-risk physicality of the ‘90s to make disarmingly whimsical statements about survival in unlikely environments.

Over the weekend, the company celebrated its recent triumphant debut at the Edinburgh Festival with benefit performances for and at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.

Seen this summer at Dance Kaleidoscope, “Te^te en l’Air” again found the nine-member ensemble rushing down a staircase like commuters in a hurry--and then using sleds, skis and auto tires to add bizarre variations to their basic action-plan.

Soon the stairs themselves opened into compartments and dancers plunged in and out of them, still hotly pursuing individual interests and obsessions despite the increasingly radical strategies necessary to get from one place to another.

In “Manmade,” smaller groups interacted inside a huge section of metal pipe--one large enough in diameter to allow the dancers to stand up. The piece will premiere at Occidental College on Feb. 2, but the 20-minute, work-in-progress version seen Saturday seemed to make the pipe or tunnel a metaphor for the theater: a place where people formally display wondrous skills.

For instance, Darren Press performed an antic sound-and-gesture prologue solo, partnered Rebecca Butala in a trapeze act off the top of the pipe and joined the gymnastic, which-way-is-up trio inside with Paul Katami and Jeremy Jacobs. Also deep within: a lyrical pas de deux for the nearly nude Nick Erickson and Monique Sobolewski. Moreover, resident Diavolo composers Juliet Prater and Jean-Pierre Bedoyan used the pipe as a musical instrument, pounding on it as if it were the world’s largest steel drum.

Premiered at Edinburgh, “D.2.R. (Descent to Return)” placed seven dancers on a giant vertical peg-board, turning them into human pinballs as they hurtled between pegs in their transit from the top of the board to the floor. The piece looked brutally punishing to execute but its expressive implications never really expanded--not even when Erickson painfully navigated the board with his hands tied behind his back. Compared to previous Diavolo repertory, it remained curiously dehumanized, winning by intimidation more than imagination.

Daniel Wheeler designed the set units for “Manmade” and “D.2.R.,” with the resourceful lighting for the program credited to Diana McGuigan. No further Highways performances are scheduled.