Gamson Paints a Provocative L.A. Portrait

Today the issue of truth--what is true, what isn’t--is omnipresent. In Rosanna Gamson’s “Grand Hope Flower,” the choreographer has constructed a dance-theater epic that ultimately reveals an authoritative, postmodern portrait of her adopted city, Los Angeles.

While the small stage at Highways Performance Space was sometimes constraining on Thursday (the piece was recently performed at the Getty Center), her 15-member company, Rosanna Gamson/World Wide, successfully journeyed into the worlds of fairy tales, physics and cinema, shedding light on unanswerable questions like “What is time?”

Shedding light indeed. Gamson’s set consisted of dozens of unmatched lamps--many contained within taped-off squares on the floor--whose on-off switching sounds furnished quirky rhythms, as well as beautiful stage effects and the ability to convey quick mood changes. Gamson’s text, adapted from Isaac Newton, Richard Feynman, Nina Apfels and the Brothers Grimm, delivered in lecture-like snippets by dancer Kimberly Flynn, provide this 60-minute work with provocative musings and backbone, but it is Shane W. Cadman’s sumptuous string quartet score--and the powerful dancers themselves--who give the piece thrilling life.

Grand, Hope and Flower are streets in downtown Los Angeles. The words recur mantra-like--interspersed with other sound bites that provide textual fodder for movement vignettes: dancers running, dancers piggy-backing, couples simulating love-making, unison leaps. At one point, Flynn, wielding a small lamp a la Statue of Liberty, wove through the phalanx of bodies--bodies coming together like a pyramid, bodies coming apart to roll on the floor.

Crisp, clean dancing ruled. Notable were Irene Feigenheimer in a graceful solo, while Lauren Haze and Johnny Tu tossed off agile jumps. “Little Red Riding Hood” was rendered partly in Spanish, with an able Richard Gallegos as the wolf and Christina Taylor the hooded heroine.

The flip side of light is dark--death--and Gamson deftly reminds us, “The wolf is always at the door.” Her voice is original, compelling and necessary in today’s strange world, where truth is sometimes hard to find.

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Rosanna Gamson’s “Grand Hope Flower” continues at Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, tonight and Sunday, 8:30 p.m. $15. (213) 660-8587.