ELLIS WOOD.

ELLIS WOOD DTW'S BESSIE SCHCONBERG THEATER SEPTEMBER 14-OCTOBER 3, 1999 REVIEWED BY GUS SOLOMONS JR

Why do budding choreographers feel that creating an evening-length dance is as easy as trotting out movement ideas willy-nilly? A full-evening piece needs a unifying theme that is comprehensive enough to justify its length; its parts should represent cogent discoveries that are organized in a way that takes the audience on a journey from point A to point Z--or at least to paint B.

Ellis Wood is a remarkable dancer. She moves with breathtaking articulateness and the resilience of India rubber, as her solo that opens her new work, Home for the Naked, splendidly proves. Seemingly without preparation, her legs fly into the air, she lands catlike from skimming leaps, silently, effortlessly. She balances unshakably on half-toe while gesturing fiercely with hands and torso. She rolls and recovers in the blink of an eye.

Bathed in Philip Sandstrom's glorious light, three large, smooth-textured boulders by sculptor Daniel Stebbins mark the periphery of the space. On one, Wood's sister, Raegan Wood Sanders--hair inked, black scars streaking her face--mirrors her gestures. Laurence Rawlins, a Buddha-like priest, sits on another stone, gesturing glacially. Then Melanie Aceto, Monica Bill Barnes, Wendy Blum, and Jennifer Phillips, all equally fluent in Wood's quicksilver style, dance together and in pairs to Scott Westerfeld's pastiche of Middle Eastern-sounding music.

The facial and manual gesticulations that pepper the vigorous dancing grow distraught. An angry solo by Sanders culminates in a cathartic drenching by the Buddha: the ink in her hair dribbles down her face and body. There's a sexy women's quintet in costumer Kim Lennox's slinky chemises and gauzy gloves, and an exciting push-me-pull-you duet for Aceto and Phillips. Wood makes luscious movement and is theatrically clever, using split rear panels to fill the stage instantaneously with dancers.

But the piece never clarifies its intent, and that leaves us increasingly frustrated by our inability to make sense of the long succession of anguished episodes. Home for the Naked needs a dose of dramaturgy to focus its emotions for the choreographer and thus for the audience.