Freedom Extends Only So Far

Take four talented, creative dancers and musicians. Put them in a space at the Los Angeles Central Library with a small stage but wide aisles and balconies where performers could be situated. Set up improvisational structures or game plans for a six-part collaboration. Then work to see what the relationships between the participants, the venue and the chosen tasks, themes or subjects might yield.

“Move/Let Us Listen” certainly had its agenda clearly defined on Sunday afternoon in the library’s 235-seat Mark Taper Auditorium. If anything, the expressive points of departure for this event in the library’s “Soundings” performance series seemed far more potent than the ones fueling a previous improvisational project for choreographer Loretta Livingston and composer Robin Cox at Cal State L.A.

But this time the Livingston and Cox ensembles looked locked down and over-directed--nearly as specifically controlled at every moment as they would have been in formal choreography or conventional music-making.

Quotes and reminiscences on the program sheet set up the context for each portion of the performance. A statement about freedom from painter Pablo Picasso, for example, conditioned “The Forked Road.” However, for all their energy and expertise, the dancers and musicians never seemed free here or not free, just hectically working through an assignment.

With the musicians setting up a nervous, clockwork pulse from the stage, the dancers spread out to the edges of the forestage, the front balcony and the center aisle, executing the designated processes in their own ways and then switching positions with one another.

Livingston briefly stroked Johnny Tu’s head during one such shift, but opportunities for contact remained unexplored throughout the afternoon. Yes, dancers and musicians marched together in “The Rhythm Diaries,” and clarinetist Elena Weber even joined a group sprawl. But “The Porch” section lacked any of the family cohesion evoked in its printed quote from architect Charles W. Moore, fragmenting instead into simultaneous, scattered gestural riffs that might have seemed compelling in solos but looked pointlessly busy en masse.

During the “Whisper and Shout” finale, the most overtly emotional segment of the afternoon, Heather Gillette took Tu’s hand and he passively partnered her. A little later, Livingston leaned into him and, for a moment, he let his head drop onto her neck. But she quickly whirled away and everyone sank into chairs for the fade-out.

The dancing proved faultlessly adroit and resourceful. But this observer felt that “Move/Let Us Listen” ended exactly where it should have begun: with feelings, relationships and connections that needed to be tracked, whatever the quoted pretext was supposed to be. All the dancers found individual approaches to their duties--Alyson Little Jones’ tendency to turn the Taper into an imaginary swimming pool, for instance, or Tu’s full-tilt athleticism. But their activities rarely linked up in a single satisfying action or image. So, ultimately, it made more sense to watch and enjoy the contributions of any one dancer than view the larger picture, in which the components canceled each other out.

It proved harder to guess the improvisational options and contributions of the musicians: Cox, Weber, Erik Leckrone and Eric Mellencamp. Reverberant with bell tones but driven by violin or clarinet, the music came in cycles, always about to go somewhere but cleverly doubling back.

Since so much improvisational performance reeks of navel-gazing and self-indulgence, you can understand why Livingston and Cox would want to set up a structural safety net against such excesses. But what an audience wants from serious improvisation is something deeper or more revealing than conventional art-making. And “Move/Let Us Listen” turned out to be something less.