Artists Pull Audience Into Their World

Modern dance committed to personal, intuitive expression dominated the stimulating, 10-part “Festival of Solos and Duets” at the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood on Friday.

The quality of the segments varied dramatically, but the emphasis on individual perception and stream-of-consciousness choreography made the whole event a testament to the way dance can bypass everything logical and linear to pull an audience deep inside an artist’s emotions.

Presenting a slate of emerging, locally based artists, co-producers Deborah Lawlor and Benita Bike capitalized on the Fountain’s intimacy and on the audience’s willingness to grapple with enigmatic images.

In Moonea Choi’s “What’s Up,” for instance, the title became both a mantra and an index to Choi’s restless manipulation of a folding stepladder. Sometimes the ladder was up, sometimes Choi was up, but the ultimate question of the relationship between animate and inanimate matter remained unresolved.

In “Beloved, be loved,” Paula Present showed this relationship at its most life-affirming. Dancing lyrically around and over a boombox, she reminded everyone of how recorded music can lift us emotionally and inspire a sense of connection even when we’re most alone. “We will keep each other safe from harm,” the lyrics promised, and Present responded with utter devotion.

Raw fear drove a number of the pieces, starting with Christine Chrest’s “Invasion,” in which her dancing grew ever more troubled as Richard Gray moved ever nearer. The ending (a lift, briefly glimpsed between blackouts) suggested violence, even rape, but the context of the piece proved so subjective that we could have been inside a memory or paranoid fantasy. You decide.

“Closing In” found Kiha Lee counting backward from a fearful present to years marked by happy childhood games and loving playmates. In the end, however, she returned to the scary 2000, 2001, 2002 and faced her future heroically. Maria Gillespie, however, danced with increasingly fractured and flung-out desperation as voices bombarded her in “Wakatta/Coming In Clear,” the evening’s most punishing solo and another testament to a woman’s bravery under fire.

Both Don McLeod’s “From Out of the Ashes” and Susan Shaberman’s “Invisible Strings” used fear as one component in solos that may have lost effectiveness through exploring too many feelings in too short a time. Shaberman’s technical refinement and mastery of body sculpture loomed large even when her piece grew unreadable, while McLeod’s weird resemblance to film star Greer Garson linked his style of butoh to the glamorous drag impersonations of butoh pioneer Kazuo Ohno at their most florid.

Three women’s duets proved the most conventional choreographic offerings on the program. Erin Hirsh and Dani Lunn’s “Used Forms” cleverly lampooned a number of temptress cliches--particularly the slinky struts of jazz dancing. Directed by Carol McDowell, “Conversations” deftly juxtaposed the classical Indian dancing of Anjali Tata and the swirly modernism of Alesia Young. However, the finale, “This Is the Dance You Made From My Dance,” made only the most rudimentary forays into sharing.

“Vein” sensitively evoked the bonds of sisterhood through overlapping speeches and dream dances created and performed by Elaine Wong and Koala Yip. Hovering protectively over each other, mirroring each other’s actions and linking their relationship to nature imagery, they made family blood ties into sweet, mystical communion.

Most of the choreographies on Friday displayed artists still growing toward a defining style or artistic identity. However, their freshness and lack of fakery made them easier to enjoy than some of the hard-sell modern dance nonsense in major theaters last season. If all the upcoming dance in 2002 remains just as devoted to truth-telling and sharing insights about the fears and joys of our time, we should be in for quite a ride.