In development and in the REDCAT spotlight

A boon to the embattled local performance community, the REDCAT New Original Works (NOW) Festival opened Thursday with a split bill by Ken Roht’s Orphean Circus (performing apocalyptic opera) and Hassan Christopher’s Company of Strangers (performing experimental dance drama).

In the festival’s three weekends, seven solo artists and companies will use the REDCAT facilities at Disney Hall to test and develop works in varying stages of completion. On the inaugural program, Roht and Christopher presented only the first halves of their latest projects, each labeled as a work in progress.

Roht’s “Last Resort” found Mark Bringleson, John Balinger and Roht himself cast as the sole survivors of global holocaust, drifting in a boat under a projected starscape while Cathy Woo sang the names of the fallen.

Midway through, a message in a bottle proclaimed the death of God. However, the characters’ feeble and often comic attempts to cope with the enormity of their predicament suggested that the libretto had been conditioned less by thoughts of God than “Waiting for Godot.”

Conducted by the composer, Curtis Heard’s score used five musicians and a four-member chorus (placed underneath the boat platform) to anchor and embellish Woo and the characters’ vocal lines.

Christopher’s half of the program began with two pieces recently performed at Highways, “Concrete Jungle (Part II)” and “The Proposal,” and then introduced “Whispers,” choreographed in collaboration with Jennifer Li and the dancers.

White fabric unified the many sections of the work, initially serving as a ground cover and later as jump rope, hammock, soccer ball and a torture device used against Marissa Labog.

Talk reiterated as song also bound the sequences together, with Julia Leichman the chief speaker and Daniela Guhzuntieght the sole chanteuse.

As usual, Christopher remained fixated on discontinuities of speech and motion, but evaluation of his and Roht’s achievements must await performances of “Last Resort” and “Whispers” in their finished two-part forms. For now, NOW gives the REDCAT audience opportunities to help ambitious, energetic artists hone and focus their intentions. And those opportunities are rare.

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NOW Festival, Program 1

Where: REDCAT at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown L.A.

When: 8:30 p.m. tonight

Price: $14 (students, seniors), $18. Series ticket: $35

Contact: (213) 237-2800