Poignant ‘Spirit Dances’ Spark the Imagination

When a person titles her concert “Spirit Dances 5: Masks as Intermediaries,” she sets up an expectation or two. Expectation puts you in a posture like a cat waiting to pounce on a mouse; after a while, when nothing happens, your mind begins to get busy.

So it was with Marion Scott’s “Spirit Dances 5” on Friday at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. This was the fifth in a series for dancers gathering under Scott’s direction in which the main idea, in her words, is to “invite spirit to enter.” But enter what?

From the title and program notes showing that each dancer would be given a period of time to improvise with a particular mask, we anticipated spirit entering the dancers through their masks. That’s an ancient tradition. We also got the feeling from the room, full of what seemed to be Scott’s followers, that we’d possibly benefit from some spiritual communication if we were open to it. Hence, the mental catlike pose; we expected the spirit to enter us via a new tradition. Yeah, right.

The performance began slowly with incense burning and vocalist Andrew Werderitsch making frog, owl and wolf calls, while eight dancers coalesced in a huddle. Mentally, one had to admit to being extremely active--questioning, judging, affirming and denying feelings of boredom. But then something rare happened--and more than once.

The first was Kiha Lee’s humorous and poignant mask-dance tribute to her dead aunt and her aunt’s abusive husband; next was Craig Ng’s transformation into an ugly man; then Nanik Wenten’s Javanese-style, giddy, exorcism duet with musician (I Nyoman Wenten); and finally, Diane Takamine’s thrilling solo in which she chased herself with her mask--a pair of white hands.

Thrilling? In context, it was. One could argue that the rational mind was so busy for so much of “Spirit Dances 5” that when a dancer elicited an irrational response, one was more than usually caught in that rare and unforgettable place of having no expectations, no words. Spirit entered into it.

Mary Lee Sanders, Robert Whidbee, Robert Wolin-Manker and Scott also danced in this program, which ran through Sunday.