Dance Kaleidoscope'96.

REVIEWED BY PAMELA HARLEY DIAMOND

Anyone who has ever made an early morning visit to L.A.'s Farmers' Market knows the heady blend of sights and sounds, the sweet and spicy scents, and the colorful and curious Angeleno energy that permeates the air, all bringing a rush of excitement and the possibility of new tastes to discover. Such was the hoped-for effect of a Four-day foray into Dance Kaleidoscope '96, a festive pinata filled with the old, the new, the best, the remade, and the untried, as performance groups and choreographers gathered from around Southern California to celebrate their diversity through dance.

From flamenco to tap to New Age modern, from primordial pas de deux to performance art pieces that created their own movement vocabulary, and from AIDS tributes to relational dramas, each of the separate programs took the audience on a stylistic and idealistic journey. Dance Kaleidoscope's long-range view seemed to include all the sense and sensibilities of Los Angeles and her surrounding counties: traditional Hispanic, Filipino, Indian, and Irish dance shared the stage with emerging choreographers, neo-nineties attitudes, gay and lesbian themes, and the buffed bodies of Southern California dancers.

With so many slices of life represented, each performance program met with varying success. By far the strongest evening, opening night (billed as "Body Language") overflowed with an energized variety that represented the cream of Kaleidoscope's crop. In keeping with L.A.'s independent mind-set, most of the standouts proved to be solo pieces (in fact, almost one-third of all Kaleidoscope works were solos), well-rounded performances danced with supple strength and exhibiting a thematic clarity and satisfying fullness that many of the group pieces lacked.

Danse Celeste's Buong Suong, the climax of an ancient Cambodian ritual, came vividly to life through Sophiline Cheam Shapiro's measured simplicity of movement. The stillness found within the structured dance lent a sublime elegance and interconnectedness to her traditionally flexed toes and splayed fingers. As Shapiro knelt and turned within a small circle, the tempo built to a solemn joy.

Just as controlled but with considerably more verve, the upbeat Irish reels performed by Anne Albritton, Treble Reel and The Three Sea Captains, contained sharp, fluid, and intricate toe and heel work, her taut calves and feet crisscrossing through small steps and leaps while her squarely held upper body breathed with expressive port de bras.

Michael Mizerany took a break from the traditional with his unique and witty modern piece, Bump in the Road. Hard, rhythmic breathing added impetus to unpredictable frenetic movements as he traversed a single shah of light along the floor. With each off-center balance or side-tilted handstand Mizerany demonstrated the taut control and strongly sculpted musculature that typified many of the Kaleidoscope dancers. Equally as frenetic, Monica Favand's humorous performance art piece Carpal Tunnel struck a resonant chord with any frustrated artist who's ever held down an office job. She spun madly in her secretarial chair, legs outstretched, skimming through piles of crumpled bits of paper while reacting, through pantomime, to a situation increasingly out of control.

Among the most notable group pieces, Fall of the Feet, from Charles Maple and Dancers, evoked a playful, gymnastics-filled, muscle-beach -meets-ballet scenario with a kinetic energy that fizzed over the stage. Strong primeval partnerships and animal emotions characterized the raw energy of Walter Kennedy and Dancers's Fault Boundaries, and Licia Perea y Danzantes's duet In Concert with Angels painted moving memories of a partner who had AIDS: the two dancers flowed in and out of a rectangle of light, connected through simple gestures of mutual nurturing, yet revealing, through moments of alternate facings, that one must look toward death while the other looks to the future.

Visually evocative, the all-woman Bridge Dance Theatre's Femme/Voler ("Sometimes I swear I think we could fly") had the dancers in standout white T-shirts, bike shorts, and tutus ducking under a clothesline and swinging around a table and chairs. Using traditional props and ballet moves, the work somehow fell short, in spite of several strong, supportive duets, of a clear choreographic theme that defined these women in their roles.

Kaleidoscope's journey through the terrain of dance in Southern California revealed both strong ethnic roots and courageously skyhigh visions--as well as those characteristically tight LA. abs and lats. And while much of the nontraditional choreography fell just short of full effectiveness, lacking the completed development of artistic ideas that lends the edge to greatness, the overall strength of the programs lay in the consistently expressive energy and technical talents of a deep and passionate pool of Southern California dancers.