‘Etc.’ adds little to Stravinsky’s ‘Rite’

Never in the history of English usage has “et cetera” seemed less a vague addendum or afterthought and more the central issue or main subject than in Michael Sakamoto’s theater piece “The Rite of Spring, Etc.” at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.

The name of composer Igor Stravinsky doesn’t appear anywhere in Sakamoto’s program credits, merely in a historical note explaining the four-hand piano version of “The Rite” used (on tape), along with enough pop tunes, speeches and skits to extend the performance to nearly twice the length of Stravinsky’s score.

Sakamoto’s name, however, occurs four times on the front page alone.

All the “Etc.” that Sakamoto introduces allows him to focus his “Rite” on four isolated, delusional caricatures of self-empowerment, played with great gusto on Thursday by Suzan Averitt, Francesco Mazzini, Nurit Siegel and Sakamoto.

They yearn for contact, trust, community, and they wistfully reach out for the little baby dolls that hang suspended in the air above them.

But because Stravinsky’s music allows no space for sentimentality, their stories must be told to other accompaniments or in silence.

Indeed, Stravinsky often becomes an irrelevance -- tinkly underscoring heard between dramatic episodes -- though anyone with an interest or background in dance will find compelling the few sequences in which the score’s pounding rhythms hammer the cast as if the sounds were an unrelenting physical assault.

In these moments, Sakamoto the choreographer approaches the unsparing power of perhaps the starkest, most pitiless “Rite” thus far created: Molissa Fenley’s 1988 modern dance solo, “State of Darkness.”

Fenley used this music to challenge her resources as a performer, including her ability to dance all of it, by herself, and turn sheer endurance into virtuosity.

Sakamoto cannot claim this authenticity, for the talents of his cast often heighten the sense that his self-infatuated film celebrity, flighty seductress and other prefab satiric targets represent a creative evasion: a retreat to exactly the kind of clever facility that the original creators of “The Rite” wanted banished from the stage.

There’s plenty of energy, skill and variety in Sakamoto’s 90-minute performance, but no uncompromising personal vision, no breakthrough to new dramatic or choreographic frontiers, no reason to consider this “Rite” as more than an “etc.” on the long, long list of versions stretching back to 1913.

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‘The Rite of Spring, Etc.’

Where: Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica

When: Today, 8:30 p.m.

Price: $16

Contact: (310) 315-1459

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes