Honesty through obvious lies

Victoria Marks is a spoiler, a troublemaker, a true subversive.

In two pieces in the NOW (New Original Works) Festival at REDCAT on Thursday, this locally based choreographer, teacher and filmmaker dared to mock the escapism that some dance audiences seek and some dancers provide in these troubled times -- even calling into question other pieces on the four-part program.

In Marks’ duet “Not About Iraq,” Taisha Paggett danced an abstract contemporary solo while Marks watched nearby, cooing, “This is really beautiful, this is the truth, this is civilized, this is art.”

But when Paggett abruptly collapsed, Marks grew unnerved, repeating “Everything is OK” as a desperate mantra until Paggett resumed the dance. And when deafening helicopter sounds intruded, Marks insisted, “This is silence” -- an assurance about as convincing as the work’s title.

“Not About Iraq” ended with Paggett’s spoken analysis of her actions, and Marks’ sextet “On Forgetting” further developed a sense of individual dancers fully recognizing the realities that so many choreographers and audiences want covered up.

Beyond satirizing the painted smiles and perky physicality of show dancing, she created passages in which dancers crumpled in pain on the fringes of mindless feel-good routines. Intense music by Glenn Branca also undermined the relentless flow of empty entertainment, accompanying sequences in which dancers jumped over fallen comrades ever-so-happily, then expressed their true feelings privately, away from the spotlight.

Even if you don’t share Marks’ vision of dancers used if not corrupted by some widespread conspiracy of denial, the conceptual force of her pieces cast suspicion on the intentions of choreographer Lionel Popkin and director Terence McFarland elsewhere on the program.

Indeed, Popkin’s “Magic Carpet Solos” proved to be exactly the kind of abstract contemporary diversion that might inspire audiences to coo, “This is really beautiful, this is the truth, this is civilized, this is art.”

Extremely well danced by Popkin, Jennifer Dignan and Carolyn Hall, it introduced intriguing ideas about partnering, declarative gesture and floor locomotion -- but developed them only so far. It may well be a creative way station leading to something definitive, but Thursday, the atmospheric music and sound effects by Andy Russ were far more fully realized.

As for McFarland, his “Remain ... phase two” piled on neo-Expressionist special effects: 101 uses for various lengths of string, chalk circles on the floor, rock salt cascading from the ceiling, rambling confessional speeches, shrieked quotations from “Macbeth,” hordes of women in gauze-over-wire hoop skirts wielding vacuum cleaners -- and more, much more.

A taped score mixing nearly as many sources as the stagecraft -- but ending up just as pointlessly repetitive -- added to the overload.

The piece could mean whatever you wanted, even perhaps a search for meaning and order in the chaos of contemporary life. But essentially, “Remain ... phase two” focused on experiential frissons and picturesque discontinuities: theatricality as an end in itself.

You can’t blame McFarland for trying. We all watched the fall of Baghdad live on CNN -- twice -- and the collapse of the World Trade Center too. So these days, any director obsessed with grandiose spectacle really must ransack the prop room, his record collection and the great books of the Western world to create an impact. He has no choice.

But somehow, all McFarland’s resources and strategies mattered less than Marks’ voice warning about palliative art, camouflage art, the big lie of omission that thrives even on so-called alternative stages.

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NOW Festival

Where: REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall, 2nd and Hope streets, L.A.

When: 8:30 tonight

Price: $14 to $18

Contact: (213) 237-2800 or www.redcat.org