Gamson’s ‘Rita’ Attempts to Plumb the Depths

In “Rita Goes to Hell,” Rosanna Gamson creates Jungian dance theater from the concept that our deepest human drives and needs represent a kind of underworld: a realm of conflict and desire populated by powerful personifications (Love, Art, a judgmental Mother figure, etc.) that intersect with our conventional lives under major stress.

However promising the idea, the result faltered badly in its premiere Thursday at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. To begin with, Laura D’Arista portrays Rita as so obnoxiously shallow and tiresome that her capacity for love and, particularly, attraction to art seem pathetic self-delusions, and the experience of spending 70 minutes hearing her whine about herself becomes a living hell for the audience.

Worse, most of the acting belongs to that infernally arch, self-infatuated performance-art style that projects its empty ironies at opera-house scale. But “Rita” does offer impressive compensations, starting with Gamson’s forceful rock choreography--a mere diversion in this text-dominated event, to be sure, but frequent and compelling enough to make one wish that she would occasionally forego her usual sprawling, multidisciplinary projects for essays in pure dance.

Even better: an array of imaginative background video projections by Sallie DeEtte Mackie and Barnaby Levy that not only enrich the imagery of the work but always give you something more interesting to watch than the interactions of D’Arista, Richard Gallegos (Amor) and Paul Outlaw (Kunst).

Indeed, when a projection of a woman (D’Arista?) slowly moving under a brick archway divides and redivides until 16 shimmering miniatures fill the wall, background becomes foreground and “Rita Goes to Hell” turns into a magical video installation with a little histrionic nonsense going on in front of it.

* Rosanna Gamson/World Wide performs “Rita Goes to Hell” today and Sunday at 8:30 p.m. in Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. $15. (310) 315-1459.