Heat and Color Take the Stage at Festival of Solos and Duets

Part whirling dervish, part flamenco femme fatale, Banafsheh Sayyad, clad in a flaming red gown and brandishing a saffron-colored scarf, circumambulated her way across the stage of the Los Angeles Theatre Center Friday as part of the Fountain Theatre’s Fifth Annual Festival of Solos and Duets.

Sensuous and audacious, with an original percussive score by Pejman Hadadi, Sayyad’s “Search” proved a mesmerizing foray into the body as trance mechanism; a DNA strand--supple, fluid and noble--come to life.

Equally engaging: Marie de la Palme performing her “Rouge Impromptu, Psalm 34:8,” to a Ravel Adagio. As if bursting forth from a cocoon, De la Palme rolled across the floor, unfurling from a bolt of cloth, finally rising on pointe shoes. Combining an acrobatic sensibility with a Zenlike classicism, the statuesque dancer then performed a series of sculptural moves while suspended from two hanging strips of silk.

Other successful solos: Kiha Lee mined emotional angst in her thoughtful “Only a Dream,” hallmarked by stately walking, self-caressing and static poses; Eunmi Kuk alternated studied, Butoh-esque moves with running in place in her “Long Room,” Matt Marks’ ambient score providing an appropriately busy sound collage.

Less inspired: Paris Wages’ “Now,” an excerpt from her full-length ballet, “In the Beginning.” Twirling like a music box ballerina, Wages danced to Tom Shoaff’s generic music, throwing in a potpourri of well-executed but vacuous steps. Hilary Thomas’ “Steppe” was also more show than substance, an exercise in stamina filled with spinning and one-legged twirls, set to Johann Strauss music.

On the duets front, Danyelle Knight and Marica Pendjer displayed power and grace in Karin Jensen’s intriguing, unison-driven “Realm.” Christopher Anderson and Erin McKevitt proved perfunctory in Francisca Garcia’s unimaginative take on couples, “Falling on the Way to Perfection.”

Phyllis Douglass’ text-laden “Past and Pretense,” with Francesca Penzani and Deborah Rosen displaying female brawn and an omnipresent push-pull factor literalizing Brian Gross’ original score (“I don’t want to feel pressure . . .”), was repetitive and lacking in spirit.

In all, however, the night provided much dance for thought.