ETIHW.

For [exists]TIHW, the six-part suite Ann Carlson offered during Christmastime, the performer and choreographer turned the black-box surround of Dance Theater Workshop into a blindingly bright white space (visual installation by Todd Gilens, lighting by Philip W. Sandstrom). The "white" in Carlson's title reads more than backward; it tells us we're looking at the word and its meanings from the other side.

The suite's zany and topical tone gets set from the start as a seated Santa Claus half-benignly, half-leeringly watches the audience take its seats. All the while, three television monitors (all white, of course) offer "sight bites" activated by an unseen channel surfer. Specially created video elements by Mary Ellen Strom float throughout [exists]TIHW, sometimes as large-screen absurdist visions, other times intermixed with the cable television feed.

Carlson's dance-theater event has its own channel-surfing feel. Three appearances by a quartet of heavy-set men and women (designated Chorus I, II, and III) alternate with three separately named episodes ("Sold," "Walk," and "See"). Incidental taped music by Pierce Turner and Andy Kirshner comes and goes.

For its part, the aubergine-clad chorus of "heavies" paces and chants its way about the space, variously making pedestrian moves and conversational mutterings into softly droning invocations. "Sold" has a sextet of svelte, black-clad women going through dance class phrases while Carlson, in white bridal gown and veil, conducts a mock auction meaning to sell dancers with a patter once practiced for selling tobacco leaves.

"Walk" becomes a showcase for Sister Mary Cirelli. Dressed in her summer white habit, the sweet-natured nun strides artfully and relates a telling reminiscence about a departed friend.

"See" is another pacing-and-reciting activity. The members of this quintet of movers and speakers are all apparently blind. Their passing in, around, and through the space has a delicately teasing sense of timing. Their vocalizations have the poetic tone of jazz.

The world of audio technology has its white noise. Carlson's [exists]TIHW plays with counterpart visual sensations we might call white sights, which, on this occasion, the theater artist proposes we view from the inside looking out.