Livingston Dancers Freed by Improvisation

Refinement is not a quality normally encountered in the slash-and-burn precincts of dance improvisation, but Loretta Livingston’s “Dances for White Rooms” made the subtle, often uncanny connections between dancers into the basis for a remarkably sophisticated exploration of collaborative intelligence in the Luckman Art Gallery at Cal State L.A. on Saturday.

Subtitled “Live Composition in Dance, Video, Music and Art,” this hourlong event placed the audience on three sides of the gallery and a large projection screen on the fourth--though far enough away from the back wall to allow dancing to take place behind it.

When Livingston and her four dancers periodically disappeared into this annex, a stationary video camera transmitted their images to the screen and to any of four television sets in the gallery that were not showing video of the performance: hand-held camera views shot from floor level by Kate Johnson or Michael Masucci.

Stationed near the entrance, composer Robin Cox and percussionist Erik Leckrone supplied accompaniments and improvisations of their own, mixing violin and marimba tones in sad, sweet duets. Meanwhile, visual artist Richard Lopez rapidly sketched charcoal action-studies of the dancing at a table across the room, with assistants pinning his creations onto the gallery walls.

In the exciting duets or “Meeting Ground” portion of the five-part performance, audience members drew lots to select the partnerships between dancers, musicians, videographers and Lopez. This strategy inspired cleverness of all kinds--from dancer Johnny Tu’s playful confrontation gambits with Johnson to dancer Heather Gillette’s bold and deft attempts to distract Lopez--even to the point of throwing herself over his sketch pad.

Unfortunately, Livingston’s duet with Leckrone looked dry and detached, as if she were using the experience to make mental notes for some future choreographic statement. However, Michael Mizerany danced beyond the top of his form in collaboration with Cox--released into a dimension of passion, daring and perfect technical control rare on any stage.

Mizerany also partnered Livingston with great sensitivity in the opening “Figure and Field” ensemble, embracing her from behind, touching her face and drawing her into a moment of deep, enigmatic intimacy in the midst of a force field of group motion.

Here came Livingston’s finest accomplishment: the matched prowess of five beautifully tuned, thinking dancers--each seeming to sense how everyone else would respond and thus free to vary, modify or embellish the unison passages without fear of damaging their moods or patterns.

Her shared movement vocabulary centered power in the arms and upper torso, but its flowing, instinctual development found room for Tu and Mizerany’s soaring jumps, along with the dodgy footwork prioritized by Alyson Little Jones and Gillette.

Dressed in layers of basic black, the dancers achieved a glowing splendor through the richly tinted hairstyles designed by Alan Negus. Indeed, the women’s long, multicolored manes added a whole new spectrum of spontaneous motion to the event.

The video component proved the biggest disappointment: less advanced in the integration of dancers and hand-held camcorders than Twyla Tharp’s “Bad Smells” nearly 20 years ago and unrelievedly addicted to fragmented, jerky pixilation, a technique watchable only in small doses.