Tongue Troupe Exercises Its Gift for Expressive Movement

To the sound of recorded breathing, wind chimes and a low drone punctuated by a rhythm track, seven dancers from the locally based Tongue company began a remarkable half-hour adventure Friday at the Luckman Theater at Cal State L.A.

In the premiere of Stephanie Gilliland’s “Soon,” they managed to take all the energy, dynamism and high heat they generate in such familiar displays of athleticism as the previously reviewed “Full Frontal Enigma” on the same program and focus it on the slow, steady, incremental evolution from static kneeling poses to the threshold of their normal virtuosity.

Sounds like a great exercise, but why watch? Because denying dancers their usual resources forces from them something deeper, more essential, more connected to the need to dance than its conventional expression. Working with a strong commissioned score by Jeff Mayor and with additional choreographic support from Neal Beasley, the company endowed the smallest pivot, bend or neck rotation with spectacular concentration and something more: the art of being magnetic, of belonging in the spotlight.

Even at its most space-devouring, Gilliland’s style prioritizes the connections between movements, heightening all the muscle groups involved in a reaching action, for instance, so that we see every stage of its development. Her finest dancers have become so physically articulate in this way that they seem to be in slow motion even when they’re not. “Soon” makes this capability virtually the whole show, redefining prowess in terms of how much you bring to dancing and how much detail you reveal.

There’s no mysticism to the performance--no mantras, candles or solemnity. But the experience seems something like watching fashionably pierced and tattooed yoga masters project a kinetic beam from a nearly immobile base into the eyes of everyone looking at them--a beam that brings new possibilities alive. Certainly the phenomenal Patrick Damon Rago can roll up from the floor and hover in the air as if he’s misplaced his gravity belt, achieving one miraculous suspension after another. And there are six others almost in his league, all hellbent on getting back to basics with maximum Tongue-tied bravura.