Martinez Company Offers Uniformly Pensive Program

Everyone is pensive in the world of Francisco Martinez Dancetheatre. They run in a kind of stiff, neutral way; they swirl or scurry exactly when the music does; they even occasionally essay a smile. But overwhelmingly, they stare into space and lapse into slow-motion, moody modern dance.

A matinee program on Saturday (repeated that night) at the New Performing Arts Center on the campus of Cal State Northridge included two new works--”Cornfield” and “Dark Corner’--as well as last year’s “Primal Ground.” Each piece, choreographed by Martinez, consisted of several sections danced by his seven-member company to taped scores that were dominated by melancholy or jittery strings.

Because of Martinez’s choreographic strategies--and the ubiquitous pensive mood--each of these pieces seems to have much in common with the others. Unison or canon movement prevail--there are several duets and often sets of couples onstage together.

Perhaps “Dark Corner” comes closest to conveying a different personality: Dancers are sometimes visibly frightened or nasty instead of merely thoughtful. In a duet danced by Diana MacNeil and Roger Gonzalez, she was the intimidated, compliant female; he was a mean guy spooked by the world, handling his partner like a sack of potatoes.

“Cornfield” was more abstract, a unitard ballet full of predictable patterns and gestures. What makes movement predictable, here and elsewhere, is not only repetitive structures, but the relationship of movement to music, which seems to rule like a dictator. When a trio of women in “Dark Corner” come onstage, the music (by Alberto Ginastera) is wavering, and so they reach out with trembling feet and hands. Another problem with this kind of music visualization is the fact that the dancers almost always seem to come to a rest at the end of each musical phrase, and the constant stop-and-go starts to wear.

Not surprisingly, dancers have trouble acquitting themselves in this kind of choreography. They are hamstrung in a world of repetitive thoughtfulness, although several in Martinez’s company look as if they could do more. It’s never any fun to be stuck in a “dance by numbers” scheme--and having to be pensive by numbers can’t be any better.