‘Not About Iraq’ is all about change, terror and, yes, 9/11

When choreographer Victoria Marks takes the stage and says with a sly smile, “This is about power: mine,” she means business. Fortunately, that power has, over time, evolved into a finely honed voice, one shot through with daring, innovation and unblinking vision. In her latest work, “Not About Iraq,” seen over the weekend at UCLA’s Glorya Kaufman Hall, Marks has revisited and added new elements to pieces created since 2002 that she says were informed by the events of 9/11.

And, like these troubled times, what a wallop it packs.

Call her the Barbara Kruger of the dance world, but Marks, as impish narrator at the start of the piece making use of terse aphorisms like those used by artist Kruger (“This is the truth,” “This is sexy,” “Everything is OK”), adds irony and sadness to a series of devastatingly simple moves by Taisha Paggett. With a leap, lunge or lazy, long extension, Paggett personifies beauty before crumpling to the floor to the sounds of a helicopter and Marks uttering, “This is silence.”

Next, Maria Gillespie, Noellie Bordelet and Phithsamay Linthahane, all bounce in, smiley-faced, in unison cheerleader fashion to the bracing guitar of Glenn Branca (on tape). Paolo Alcedo and Saleemah Knight also zoom in, and Paggett and Marks execute a string of ‘60s-ish shimmies, their omnipresent grins a prelude to madness. Soon, bodies fall, they roll; others dance blithely over them.

In a fierce, heart-wrenching duet, Bordelet cradles Gillespie in her arms until the latter tumbles away and keeps on rolling before finding solace again in Bordelet’s arms. As the two twist in and out and around each other, their levels of comfort and distress rise and fall with the music. Then Paggett emerges, declaring, “Lights down.”

After intermission, Marks again proves the wily commentator, beginning Act 2 with a witty display of finger-marching before the onslaught of a long, punishing dance segment takes us to a terror-filled, no-respite zone.

Amy Denio’s siren-filled score fuels Gillespie, Bordelet and Linthahane as they run, crawl, kick and collapse thudding to the ground, where they continue thrashing full-throttle as if railing against the world -- a collective damaged nerve.

Carol McDowell’s terrific lighting, including sporadic blackouts, enhances the sense of danger. Finally, Paggett, alone onstage, intones, “This is a joke / This is a prayer.”

What this is is indelibly disturbing, dazzling art.