Grotesque Effects Mar Hysterica Program

Trying to prevent the onslaught of madness, Shakespeare’s King Lear orders his feelings away with the words “Hysterica passio, down.” On Wednesday, however, he might have said, “Hysterica Dance Company, down,” when Kitty McNamee’s locally based ensemble presented five nightmarish pieces at the Open Fist Theater in Hollywood.

Borrowing images and movement idioms from pop culture, McNamee evoked a compulsively violent, out-of-control society through fragmentary glimpses of crazed individuals. These included lovers locked into murderous dependency in “Fire in Oven” (seen in Dance Kaleidoscope 1996); couples warping social dances into something like date rape in “Shelter” and something like a deadly stalking game in “Alma”; and men in camouflage drag and women in bathing suits in “Automanic D” desperately trying on fashion model poses, martial arts stances, rock dance moves, romantic clinches and just plain stumbling around as if shopping for an identity.

However these pieces began, they inevitably caromed into some unexpected action or focus (often a deliberately demented showpiece solo), relying on dream logic and the intensity of the six-member company to hold them together. Only the trio “SRB” adopted a coherent structure and a consistent vocabulary, with Shari Nyce inserting balleticisms between the playful rough-and-tumble of Bubba Carr and Ryan Heffington.

These dancers, Nancy Anderson, Brian Frette and McNamee herself all performed valiantly, but too many of the pieces showed how dream logic can turn into a formula--and a trap. When you can be absolutely sure that no idea or motif will ever be developed, when unpredictability grows predictable and discontinuity continuous, then this kind of expressionist dance-theater degenerates into an uninvolving and perhaps even exploitative collage of grotesque effects.