American Dance Festival.

PAGE AUDITORIUM AND REYNOLDS INDUSTRIES THEATER, DUKE UNIVERSITY, DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA JUNE 8-JULY 22, 1 995 REVIEWED BY SUSAN BROILI

Like a moth to the flame, a man hangs by one hand from a lamp, his body drawn up into a ball.

This unforgettable image ends French choreographer Eric Lamoureux's solo Controverse ("Controversy," 1992), in which he portrays an isolated man, burdened by a life as heavy as the table he carries on his back. His final act could be a suicide, but could also represent a forward motion signaling change, a chrysalis, basking in warmth until wings can sprout. Lamoureux's thought-provoking work was just one highlight of the American Dance Festival's sixty-second season, which featured three impressive French companies.

Compagnie Fattoumi-Lamoureux's program also included He1a Fattoumi's solo Recidive ("Recurrence," 1992). Like a terrified bird in constant motion, always on the verge of imbalance, she jerks her head, twitches her fingers as she wavers, wobbles, totters on her toes. Ear-piercing screeches add to the edginess.

Angelin Preljocaj acknowledges the forward-looking, innovative energy of the Ballets Russes in his homage: three vibrant versions of Leonide Massine's 1917 Parade, Michel Fokine's 1911 Le Spectre de la Rose, and Bronislava Nijinska's 1923 Les Noces.

In Preljocaj's Parade (1993), choreography takes third place to Aki Kuroda's dazzling set with a glowing, red archway and Herve Pierre's fantastical costumes, especially the headgear: a red antler headdress, large red triangular hat with veil of sparkling gold and silver stars, and a bulbous, black, hairy cap with eyes and tusks.

The mood darkens as Preljocaj intensifies the drama of the other two originals by infusing his versions with violence. Brutality abounds in Preljocaj's Noces, as marriage signals a suicide of self. And his Rose in Spectre wears an overcoat, which makes his lecherous advances seem more like the rape of a young woman than a dream of sexual awakening. In a coexisting drawing-room scene, men in waistcoats and tights make slightly more civilized moves on women in off-the-shoulder dresses. The entrances of these men, who appear to leap out of nowhere, are a wonderful quote from the original, in which Nijinsky seemed to hover, forever, in his final leap out of the window.

Compagnie Schmid-Pernette (Andreas Schmid and Nathalie Pernette) appear as androgynous siblings who show spunk, humor, and tenacity in a harsh, surreal environment.

In Le Mur Palimpseste ("The Graffiti Wall," 1993), the handwriting is literally on the wall as Pernette creates ominous shadows behind a paper screen. Later, there's some fascinating, quirky partnering as one assumes a sling-the-statue pose and one dancer fits into the space vacated by the other.

As part of the International Choreographer Commissioning program, Argentina's Mabel Dai Chee Chang created Tambien El Sueno Esta Despierto ("Even the Dream Is Awake"). People appear uneasy, as though facing an approaching, unknown terror in this nightmarish world. A row of prone people laugh uncontrollably, a hysterical manifestation of fear. A woman flails and thrashes but remains bound by the tight grip of a man. He sits on a large metal conveyance which rolls onstage and off with different configurations of passengers whose casual gestures turn into tremors.

Ronald K. Brown offers a different kind of journey in Dirt Road/Morticia Supreme's Revue, in which he advocates returning home to gain self-acceptance and the strength to deal with loss, fight injustice, resist social conditioning, and not buy into the role of obedient slave, which he characterizes as a shuffling man, head bent and shoulders hunched.

The image of a slave coffee, sixteen women moving as one, ends the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble premiere of Helen Tamiris's 1937 How Long Brethren? Protesting such social injustices as the Scottsboro incident, in which seven black men, accused of raping a white woman, were hanged, seven women jerk and twitch as light falls first on one, then another. Crooked arms become the hangman's rope, raised above limp, lifeless heads.

As wan appears to die in Martha Clarke's preview of An Uncertain Hour. But it's only an illusion, as is its fight with Rob Besserer, the only tension-breaker in this long, somber piece, which sprang from Clarke's 1993 eleven-minute Dummerung ("Twilight"), a meditation on death. [See page 99 for a review of the completed work.]

Another delight surfaced in the Young Choreographers and Composers in Residence program: Richard Einhorn's pulsing rhythms and haunting melody intertwine with movement in Annie-B Parson's City of Brides. Wearing gold-spangled dresses, women carry tulip lights and display both playful innocence and the portents of its loss in birth and death images.

Bill T. Jones ended the festival on a strong note with his powerful, multimedia Still/here, in which he bares the teeth of death and the courage of those facing it--which includes us all.