Vibrancy, Power Are Dayton Troupe’s Strengths

Ballet companies may have their swan solos, but modern dance has an equally impressive bird variation--the lesser-known “Awassa Astrige/Ostrich” made by Asadata Dafora in 1932. Masterfully performed by G.D. Harris on Saturday night at the Luckman Theatre on the campus of Cal State L.A., it was one of the highlights of the first Southern California appearance by the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.

On a program that tended to put most of the 12-member troupe in constant, often frantic motion, “Ostrich” gave a glimpse of a more tempered style. Unlike the astonishingly liquid Charles Moore, best known in the “Ostrich” role from the 1984 “Dance Black America” video, Harris had more sharply etched dynamics. It was a case of uncluttered power and elegance.

The Dayton company, founded in the mid-1960s, is all vibrancy and detail, each dancer carving out a spirited space with finely honed technique and personal force. In the dreamlike “Children of the Passage,” made for the company in 1999 by Donald McKayle and Ronald K. Brown, the dancers gyrated tirelessly as “lost souls,” wearing bits and pieces of vintage formal wear in a murkily lighted ballroom.

The piece started strongly with a fusion of West African and bebopping buoyancy and changed moods only briefly (a muted procession, slinky eroticism) before riding the forcefully percolating jazz of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band to a dead stop.

In “black,” by Warren Spears, familiar Elvis ballads and bouncy Supremes hits provided a contrast for unhappy people at a dance. Identically dressed men and women awkwardly ignored each other’s needs, and the whole piece couldn’t quite decide whether you should stop in the name of love or not.

For “Sets and Chasers,” by artistic director Kevin Ward, mood changes followed a scratchy recording of a 1940 tour stop by the Duke Ellington Orchestra. With each new number, dancers changed partners or broke into solos that suggested the instruments’ qualities. But the piece never claimed its own mood--and the Duke’s orchestra remained a faint suggestion of a long-ago event.

Standing out here and elsewhere were Sheri “Sparkle” Williams, rocket-powered and refined, and Daniel Marshall, whose arabesque seems to stretch across three states. All the dancers looked great in snapshot, curtain-call phrases that nearly edged aside the uneven choreography of the evening’s main events.