Desire Fuels an Endearing ‘Lovesickness’

With her new work called “Lovesickness,” which opened Thursday night,Rosanna Gamson creates a neat little valentine to desire--to constantly thwarted desire, actually, but the piece is so inventive and rhapsodic, it makes inevitable the idea that love and lack of it are constant, intimate companions.

Gamson fills the small space at Highways in Santa Monica with constantly flowing events--dancing, songs, speech and projections. And like rapt passersby looking at a holiday-themed department store window, our eyes light upon scene after scene that enforce the mood--a phalanx of flamencos tapping out sad messages in rhythmic code; a man who breaks away into a restless flinging that lyrically resolves into thoughtful stillness (the amazingly sculptural Johnny Tu); sepia films of a woman putting on perfume; flickering street scenes projected on flimsy cloth held by a figure in white lace (liquid-voiced Melody Versoza, singing something between a lament and a love song).

Throughout, there is a woman telling stories (an appealing Dana Wieluns), mostly about her own desire and disappointments. Having trouble communicating with a German-speaking armchair analyzer, she’s clearly one of Freud’s “hysteria” cases, with a categorical diagnosis of sexual repression nipping at her heels. She also tells us about society’s narratives--how in another age, she might have been thought of as possessed, or how she might have expected the gods to take care of her. But instead, there are theories of the psyche, chemical imbalances and endless longing.

Shane W. Cadman’s score (performed by the Illustrious Theatre Orchestra) pulsates like troubling thoughts or a racing heart that won’t fade after excitement. Descending melodies and klezmer-esque interludes weave in and out of scenes as definitively as the audience-encompassing diaphanous tent that Gamson uses to interestingly veil the second of two shortish acts.

In the small corps of movers, there are skilled specialists (tango couple Cesar Cazares and Lilia Lopez; flamenco dancer Vera Flores Celaya and Tu), but there are also more “ordinary movers” who worked into this peculiar community well, whether it’s breaking into a folk/disco version of a mating dance, various solo musings or sudden simultaneous explanations.

It’s as if Gamson is showing us that everyone has a story. And as she says through Wieluns’ eventually resigned character: “I can only show you some shadows and hope you can guess what I mean by them.”

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* Rosanna Gamson/WorldWide in “Lovesickness,” Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. Tonight, Sunday, 8:30 p.m. $15. (310) 315-1459.