Feet Propel ‘Black Choreographers’ Feats

Although the program booklet at the Los Angeles Theatre Center read “Black Choreographers Showcase 2002,” the Saturday installment of this four-performance series belonged body and soul to dancers rather than dance-makers.

Most of the new works leaned heavily on writings by Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Jerry Quickley and others, with the choreographers providing little more than a gloss on the spoken word: a light show, if you like, decorating the writers’ profoundly expressed insights and feelings.

Moreover, none of the showcased choreographers invented the movement styles they explored, and none developed, extended or personalized them significantly. So their pieces looked imitative, even generic.

Only in Trina Parks’ easygoing but cogent summary of Katherine Dunham technique did the Saturday audience glimpse true bedrock creativity. A great star who is still underappreciated for her contributions to American dance, Dunham distilled a distinctive dance idiom from a number of sources early in the 20th century. No mere historical relic, that idiom looked more potent in the performance of Bert Woods and, to a lesser extent, Sloan Robinson than much of the hand-me-down jazz/modern dances on the rest of the program.

Except for Delane Vaughan’s ragged and ridiculously overextended hip-hop demonstration--a segment that sent the program past the three-hour mark and prompted plenty of exits--the dancing often proved not merely exciting but redemptive.

Vaughn’s own moody “One for Daddy-O” jazz solo boasted remarkably powerful, authoritative arm and shoulder movement, though his mastery of steps and balances remained uneven--a problem also evident in his underpowered hip-hop legwork.

Three pieces by Maura Owens Townsend’s Project 21 Performing Arts Consortium succeeded on the strength of the performers’ sustained fervor. In the solo “The Letter,” Morgan Thomas made something very personal and fresh out of the evening’s big choreographic cliche: dancers writhing on the floor and reaching up in one solo after another.

In “Grandmothers,” Thomas, Townsend and Wendy Baity pulled the emotions of Angelou’s poem into their bodies, anchoring the trio through intense poses more than motion.

Quickley’s troubled but ultimately positive rap on current events overwhelmed everything else in “Untitled,” but the dancing in this Project 21 jazz sextet had enough technical security to look respectable in an evening rich in prowess. And nobody displayed that prowess more flamboyantly than the JazzAntiqua dancers in Pat Taylor’s five-part “Silhouettes in Motion: Vignettes From the Big Train Project.”

“When Sue Wears Red” established Katisha Adams as Queen of “Big Train” Attitude, and the opening “Lennox Avenue” solo introduced the skillful, effortless and sincere Charles Zacharie as Mr. Oppressed Nice Guy.

Maurice Watson embodied balletic flash and found his ideal complement in the vibrant Terrica Banks, a dancer versatile enough to match his bravura attacks yet also make an off-the-rack, lonely-but-slinky “Blue Monday” solo utterly convincing.

But the tense, feral desperation of Tommie Evans in the “White” solo took the whole work into a much edgier and less predictable direction, just as the closing “Room Enough” solo allowed Jason Lewis room enough for an astonishingly volatile yet somehow noble communion with the lyrics to “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

Bruce Nelson read the Hughes and historical texts effectively and provided vocal rhythms to accompany the “American Gothic” duet for Townsend and Lewis.

Drummer Ricardo Alvalos brought his years of Dunham experience to the Parks segment, and the JazzAntiqua piece featured the artistry of Marcus Shelby (bass, original music and arrangements), Lorca Hart (drums), Ark Sano (piano), Evan Francis (sax) and Brian Swartz (trumpet).

Produced by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department in celebration of Black History Month, the event suffered from crude and often ruinous sound and lighting. Robinson served as host.