A Program With Class by Cal State L.A. Troupe

Call it L.A. Modernism 101: the program of pieces by some of this city’s most active and distinctive choreographers performed by the University Dance Ensemble of Cal State L.A. on campus Friday. Newly commissioned works by Loretta Livingston, Wininfred R. Harris, Tim Miller and Hae Kyung Lee challenged the audience as well as the student and part-time faculty dancers while reminding everyone how central CSULA has become to the Southland dance community.

Miller’s text-driven “I Am Not You” found the activist solo performance artist connecting with his 12 young performer-collaborators by going back to the themes of works he created in his 20s--especially “Postwar,” with its defensive and sometimes desperate declarations of individuality. Other Miller hallmarks--the naked body used as a placard, for instance--gained new force in a group context, and the emphasis on speech yielded periodically to promising if undeveloped passages of movement expression.

Livingston’s dreamlike septet “In the Memory Place” also relied overmuch on talk: initially a kind of incantation calling forth lost relationships but all too quickly descending into whiny tri-lingual monotone and forced tittering. The dancing, however, remained gorgeous: a shimmering swirl of lyricism anchored by partnerships both real and imagined, with an atmospheric score by Michael Brook adding its own weight.

Using curry-flavored jazz by Prem Joshua, the lush quartet “To Quench Your Thirst” displayed the alchemy of the best Harris pieces, with women dancers growing so profoundly involved in each moment and task that they come to embody a supernatural depth of soul. Here gestural images of bathing and veiled costumes by Snezana Petrovic added to the sense of a secret ritual.

Propelled by Steve Moshier’s music, “Illusions From the Edge” and “Forces Within” showed Lee abandoning her usual obsession with Expressionist movement-theater in favor of a dancier expression of themes--especially in the former, with its artfully evolving structural gambits and potent images of people clinging to one another. In “Forces Within,” the dancing expanded from wary processions for the five dancers to galvanic, full-out unisons. Yes, Lee’s addiction to delirious facial mugging and body-twitching did periodically burst forth, but, for once, it proved a fleeting aberration.