Lower Left’s Anatomically Correct Body Language

Marshaling a formidable array of theatrical and choreographic strategies, theLower Left women’s performance collective of San Diego is examining corrupt societal attitudes about the look, appropriation and abuse of women’s bodies, and the consequences to their emotional equilibrium, in a tough-talking 75-minute cavalcade titled “Horns, Wings and More Tales.”

At Highways Performance Space on Thursday, the company’s use of full nudity in quaint Maxfield Parrish-style groupings contrasted with their studiously bizarre monologues about body hair, sexual violence and exactly which portions of her anatomy a modern woman can do without.

You might not agree with Colleen Phillips’ battle cry of “We don’t need a vulva,” but even at its most outrageously over-the-top--as in Karen Schaffman’s cartoon feminist manifesto--Lower Left left no doubt that the provocations for such excesses are real and deadly serious in what it called the contemporary “he-world.”.

Midway through, the piece even contained its own brief but accurate review: “It isn’t really dancey-dance. I’d say it’s different.” And the differences from conventional dancing extended to Jane Blount’s cathartic immersion in a pool of ochre body-paint early in the evening--and in clear water for the finale. Unorthodox movement values also remained paramount during a parodistic trapeze quintet in which Nina Martin proved especially adept at being grotesquely mock-seductive.

However, Margaret Paek contributed the danciest dance moments in a skillful gymnastic solo under a table and in a wild trapeze spin during that depiction of women forever kept dangling provocatively--and forever kept from standing on their own two feet and getting anywhere.

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* Lower Left Performance Collective performs “Horns, Wings and More Tales” tonight and Sunday at 8:30 p.m. at Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. $13 (students) to $15. (310) 315-1459.