Ann Arbor Summer Festival Dance Gallery/Peter Sparling and Co.

POWER CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN JULY 12, 1997 REVIEWED BY SUSAN ISAACS NISBETT

Space journeys are news again, and that's what Peter Sparling, director of Dance Gallery/Peter Sparling & Co., offered in an Ann Arbor Summer Festival program that led from the dance universe's center to its choreographic edges.

In Berliner Mass, set to Arvo Part's austerely beautiful score, Sparling evokes despair and hope through eloquent solos and ensembles that recall the sorrowing dignity and bold design of Doris Humphrey and Jose Limon dances. The message, at work's end, when ten community dancers join the company's nine, is of caring and kindness; the dancers catch, cradle, and lift each other high. Yet this is the weakest section in this otherwise strong, well-danced work--cliched, not uplifting.

One can hardly level the same charge against Sparling's experimental Seven Enigmas, a stunning celebration of humans' desire to comprehend and savor the cosmic surround. Company members star in the seven solos that are Enigmas' core, but the work is truly multimedia, the outcome of an "Enigmas Project" that involved faculty from the University of Michigan, where Sparling also teaches. Daniel Roumain, a doctoral student in composition, made the score, and visual artist Jim Cogswell integrated the work of UM scientists Fred Bookstein and John Clarke into his set design.

Occasionally, Enigmas' choreographic material underwhelms, insignificant beside all the technical gee-gosh wizardry (like humans in the universe?), but its explorations of inner and outer space are fascinating. Courtesy of Bookstein, Clarke, and Cogswell, the stage reads as space-age scientific laboratory. A constellation of hemp monkey-knots hangs above; giant screens project images from the Hubble space telescope or fabulous morphing ghost-grids of the dancers' movements; a battery of video monitors flashes domino dots. The dancers inspect the equipment in hooded white lab coats, mitts, and booties. But it's friendly sci-fi--the costumes also suggest a troupe of Paddington Bears. And Roumain's electronic score is humanized with melody and snippets of conventional harmony.

The playful atmosphere persists in Lisa Catrett-Belrose's jester solo and in John Gutoskeys costuming here and at work's end, when Julianne O'Brien Pedersen emerges like Space Barbie, in silver lights and a glittering black dress with a slit.

But there's mystery too, most affectingly in Gayle Bailey's long, centrally placed solo, where she strides, arms up-stretched, like a goddess summoning celestial powers, with William Crowley as her male counterpart in the solo that follows. That both she and Crowley seem to share their magic with us makes this universe ultimately reassuring.