Whimsy and L.A. Contrasts From Collage Dance Theatre

Across from the drive-up entrance to the downtown Marriott Hotel, nine dancers in white formed a living frieze on Thursday--stretching, lifting one another and frequently assuming prayerful poses.

Those poses returned 90 minutes later, as Collage Dance Theatre’s newest, whimsical, site-specific production reached its mock-solemn, death-and-transfiguration finale in the hotel swimming pool.

Set in five different areas on the hotel grounds, Heidi Duckler’s “After Eden” used the Marriott not merely as an upscale pleasure palace to be vigorously dusted, polished and vacuumed by hordes of Collage dancers dressed in staff uniforms, but as a symbol of the extreme contrasts and shifting realities of Los Angeles itself.

En route to the loading dock, for instance, you passed the kind of cardboard lean-to that serves as shelter for the homeless. And at the dock itself a series of monologues written by Terry Wolverton depicted Angelenos facing bleak futures: a dying AIDS patient (Sean Parkinson); a drugged-out urchin (Minerva Vier); an undocumented worker in danger of deportation (Richard Azurdia); and, lest matters get too serious, an ex-soap star (Constance Forslund) with a dead-end career.

Early in the evening, drag chanteuse Owen Eden promised us “There’ll be some changes made,” and misfit magician Bryan Randall described L.A. as a place where “anything is possible.” Indeed, his own bizarre fate served as the ultimate example of it.

Apart from Susan Kawashima’s intimate transformation solo, Duckler’s choreography concentrated on group action in unusual locales--on escalators, lobby railings, kitchen tables, poolside lounge chairs--that turned the Marriott into one big dance floor.

Music by Amy Knoles and video segments credited to John Pleshette added to Collage’s latest exploration of the fantasy uses of a real environment. The piece began as a Miami project that premiered in January--the site in that case was the Eden Roc hotel--but its Florida origins never showed.

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Collage Dance Theatre, “After Eden,” today and Sunday, 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Marriott Downtown, 333 S. Figueroa St., L.A. Tickets: $15-$25. Information: (323) 655-8587.