`SPIRITS': HEADY AND COMPLEX.

`SPIRITS': HEADY AND COMPLEX MICHAEL CURRY KELLER AUDITORIUM PORTLAND, OREGON JUNE 7-9, 2001

Defying categories and crossing lines, dancing on the ever-blurring boundary between high art and popular culture, Spirits, conceived, created, and directed by designer Michael Curry, has a lot of marvelous moments, but is not yet the integrated work of theatrical art it could be. It impresses without transforming, and because it is so scattershot, only in places provides the emotional catharsis Curry is aiming to produce.

Curry, who shared a Tony Award with Julie Taymor for his animal puppets in The Lion King, is extremely gifted at creating giant puppets in which the puppeteers play a prominent and visible role, and at integrating human bodies as components of the puppets themselves.

However, while he assembled a star team of choreographers to help him--David Parsons, Moses Pendleton, Jamey Hampton, Ashley Roland, and Trey McIntyre as director of choreography--Curry is not an experienced director, and like many novices, tried to pack too much disparate material into Spirits's ten loosely linked episodes. Break dancing, capoeira, ballet, modern, hip-hop, even baton twirling, accompanied by spoken text and an excellent (though sometimes unsuitable for dancing) jazz score by drummer and composer Alan Jones, were individually impressive and frequently crowd pleasing. But in the final analysis, this viewer, at any rate, wanted something more.

The high points were provided by Roland's performances throughout, but particularly as the Hindu widow committing suttee (ritual suicide) in "Pyre," choreographed primarily by Parsons, and by McIntyre's performance in "Sherpa," a terrifying episode accompanied by the sounds of an avalanche in which a mountaineer is pulled from his bed by the sherpa's ghost and whirled above the stage in a dance of death. In both episodes the integration of the dancing body with Curry's creations-a swinging rope of fire in "Pyre" and giant puppet in "Sherpa"--creates a terrifying beauty and imagery that sticks tenaciously in the mind.

Other fine moments were provided by the Los Angeles-based, highly charismatic break-dancer Alex Garibay whenever he was onstage, which wasn't enough; Steve Gonzales, a member of MOMIX, who now directs Portland's Jefferson Dancers; Jefferson dancer Jonte Moaning in "Spectre #34," and most of the cast in "Martial Hoedown," choreographed by McIntyre.

The finale, "Stories of Hope," a lovely pure-movement piece for which McIntyre was also responsible, ought to have included the superbly designed and executed puppet creatures of the first half, among them a triceratops of improbable charm. There is no climax or visual wrap-up. Spirits, which has been built to tour, promises much, but it needs transitions, fine-tuning, and focus before it hits the road.