The dark side of womanhood

Depictions of desperate women linked most of the pieces in “Power, Passion and Soul,” a potent, uneven 13-part program at the Ivar Theatre on Saturday.

Producer Deborah Brockus said the event was intended to showcase fusions of modern and jazz dance -- but hybrid form proved less notable than intense emotion in works by nine locally based choreographers and companies.

“Something I Can Never Have” was the title of a familiar dance drama by Joseph Allen Decker and Sarah Ford (strongly executed Saturday), but the same words might have labeled nearly all the pieces.

Along with the combative partnerships in the Decker and Ford quartet, Carin Noland’s trapped fury in Josie Walsh’s duet “Esclate” (opposite Donte Phillips) and Lisa K. Lock’s assaultive frenzy in Kitty McNamee’s solo “Why, Why, Why” gave the program its hardest, sharpest edge.

Brockus sought to express a sense of feminist self-sufficiency in her quintets “Staring Into the Sun” and “Still Waters Run Deep.” But darker visions of womanhood predominated.

For instance, Rei Aoo projected aching vulnerability in her character solo “Move On,” and sympathetic, unhappy women were also feelingly portrayed by Kana Miyamoto in Kenji Yamaguchi’s “Recollection” and by Nina McNeely in both McNamee’s “Duet” and Ryan Heffington’s new, structurally ambitious “Stars Into Water.”

Heffington here placed an agonized love-death duet in front of an impassive pantheon of dancers -- though the outcome remained enigmatic and the style curiously florid.

Male strength and sensitivity briefly came to the fore in Ken Morris’ fine performance of Brockus’ “Tenacity” solo and through Sal Vasallo’s tremendous partnering in “Stars Into Water.”

But men usually turned up as oppressors (Vasallo in “Duet,” for example), self-obsessed virtuosi (Yamaguchi in “Recollection”) or a decorative backdrop (the chorus boys in “Stars Into Water”).

Works in progress by Jeffery Page and Denise Leitner completed the program.