Where Grasp Equaled Reach

Experimental and socially conscious choreographies dominated the dance year on local stages, often boasting upscale production values but with no loss in expressive rigor. The trend began early, with Eiko and Koma’s butoh-influenced “When Nights Were Dark,” at the Japan America Theatre in February. This nightmarish life-cycle integrated stark physical actions with changes introduced by magical lighting effects and the constant movement of a massive island set--a set that not only rotated but moved toward and away from the audience.

The same month also saw two ambitious ventures in European movement theater: Angelin Preljocaj’s study of contemporary brutality, “Paysage Apres la Bataille,” at UCLA’s Royce Hall, and Sasha Waltz’s satire on middle-class values, “Allee der Kosmonauten,” at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. Both pieces mocked consumer culture, but Preljocaj focused on the conflict between animal instinct and human intellect while Waltz used 16 video screens to provide multiple views of her characters’ environment and the possessions (and companions) they obsessively manhandled.

February also offered the return of the magnificent Nederlands Dans Theater in Jiri Kylian’s “Bella Figura,” a work that looked boldly experimental in its fluid stagecraft at its Southland premiere five years ago. However, at the Wiltern Theatre in 2001, this sensual yet almost reverent tribute to the human body in action emerged as something greater: a true classic of our age.

Paul Taylor’s new “Black Tuesday” also seemed on its way to classic status. Danced by American Ballet Theatre at the San Diego Civic Theater in September, it used cheery pop tunes of the Depression era and an assortment of down-and-out characters to remind audiences of how obnoxiously show business can sugar-coat poverty and social problems.

Taylor has long been a master at fashioning thoughtful, downbeat exposes of mindless upbeat entertainment. Some of the same double-edged expertise informs the work of the year’s big choreographic discovery, Sean Curran. Fusing postmodern priorities that he learned in the Bill T. Jones company with entertainment values he honed in the Broadway cast of “Stomp!,” Curran made his four-part program at the Alex Theatre in October a showcase for wildly original, unpredictable creativity.

Many of the year’s most exciting moments came from individual dancers in these as well as other works. Here, in chronological order, are 10 unforgettable performances from one aficionado’s calendar:

1. For dramatic complexity physicalized with unstinting kinetic force and stylistic versatility: Vera Arbuzova as a great Catherine in the Eifman Ballet’s neo-Expressionist historical epic “Russian Hamlet: The Son of Catherine the Great,” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in March.

2. For hallucinatory shape-shifting prowess and sheer endurance: Hannah Sim and Mark Steger, a.k.a. osseus labyrint, in their scary, interactive science project, “Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses” at Side Street Live in April.

3. For a superbly refined but unusually spirited vision of eternity: the 32-member corps of shades in the Paris Opera Ballet’s “La Bayadere” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa in May.

4. For keeping deft, detailed character-dance skills from becoming a lost art: Stanley Holden as Dr. Coppelius in the Inland Pacific Ballet staging of “Coppelia” at Bridges Auditorium in Claremont and at the Luckman Complex at Cal State L.A. in May.

5. For heroic improvisational passion and technical daring: Michael Mizerany in the collaborative, multidisciplinary “Dances for White Rooms” in the Luckman Art Gallery at Cal State L.A. in May.

6. For dancing of unearthly suavity, precision and emotional power: Thai dancer-choreographer Pichet Klunchun in his “Chuy Chay” solo in the valedictory Asia Pacific Performance Exchange program at the Japan America Theatre in L.A. in June.

7. For supplementing an all-but-lost Romantic vision of ballerina fragility and purity of style with an enchanting sensuality all her own: Hye-Kyung Lim as Nikiya in the Universal Ballet “La Bayadere” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in July.

8. For making a character’s descent from victim to victimizer constantly surprising, believable and eloquently danced: Will Kemp as Angelo in Matthew Bourne’s deliriously carnal dance drama “The Car Man,” performed by his Adventures in Motion Pictures company at the Ahmanson Theatre in downtown L.A. in September and October.

9. For perfect teamwork and an uncanny rapport that made the contrasts and challenges in familiar classical duets newly thrilling: Lorna Feijoo and Oscar Torrado in the National Ballet of Cuba mixed bill and “Coppelia” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in October.

10. For making trash choreography look treasurable with his elegance, expressivity, technical control and star presence: Desmond Richardson in the hard-sell Complexions showcase at the Ahmanson Theatre in November.

Performance of the Year: Rudy Perez in his bleak yet courageous “Feeling for Open Spaces, None for Crowded Areas” at the Luckman in September. A pioneer of postmodernism, dancer-choreographer Perez has used long wooden poles for spatial emphasis ever since 1964. But now, at age 72, he is visually impaired and in this unflinching, poignant self-portrait, all those sky-sweeping poles were replaced by a thick red cane--a cane that he tapped on the ground to feel his way through a dark world.

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Lewis Segal is The Times’ dance critic.