Earth Studies.

Shades of Diaghilev! Earth Studies is a link in the encouraging new chain of collaborative music-theater pieces, which combine music, dance, opera, and drama in ways that make each an equal partner. So it was a disappointment that the dancers (except for two soloists) were the only nonprofessionals involved. While the student dancers from the Boston Conservatory performed excellently, they were students nonetheless.

Earth Studies comprised three mythic scenes, "The Crab," "Cyrene," and "The Cedar Forest," played without intermission. The most successful was "Cyrene." Featuring more dance than the other two scenes, and incorporating the production's only two professional dancers (Scott Putman and Demetrius Klein, who also choreographed Earth Studies), the section achieved a mythical, mystical atmosphere that immersed the viewer in a Rashoman-like retelling of the tale. The second telling of "Cyrene," a solo stunningly performed by Putman, contained the most inventive choreography of the evening.

"The Crab," adapted from a Japanese Kyogen play, featured a crustacean composed of three dancers and a mezzo-soprano, but Klein's unimaginative choreography had no stylistic affinity with the rest of the piece. And in the final, turgid scene, "The Cedar Forest," the dancers mostly performed behind a scrim that obscured their actions in an annoying way. The choreography consisted mainly *of familiar runs, leaps, and falls, but at the very end there were some interesting moments as the dancers descended the set piece, hanging, sliding, and tilting in lovely ways.

The music, composed by Martin Brody and played by the fine Core Ensemble, was generally successful, often quite beautiful. Elaine SpatzRabinowitz's sets made fascinating use of different levels, but Mimi Gross's otherwise outstanding costumes unaccountably included several for the dancers that were ill-fitting and out of sync with rest of the production.

RELATED ARTICLE: NAT'L VIEW

"Nuevo flamenco," a contemporary approach to traditional flamenco, has developed to the point where every artist working in the technique must find a way to address it. Flamenco Vivo: Rhythms of the Soul (John Anson Ford Amphitheater, Los Angeles, August 30-September 1, 1996) offered adaptations of this new movement vocabulary by four dancer-choreographers. New York City-based La Conja added touches of contemporary braceo (arm movements) to an otherwise traditional style. Her emotional commitment to the movement, however, reached beyond styles or trends. As a soloist, Spanish dancer Fernando Villalobos used contemporary movements that were too mannered for his personality to transcend. His warmth and grace emerged in the ensemble pieces. Los Angeles choreographer Roberto Amaral, who conceived of and directed Flamenco vivo, took a broad compositional approach, bringing in ideas from modern dance, jazz, and contemporary and traditional flamenco styles. Although there were moments of great fire and inventiveness, the result was unfocused. The San Francisco-based dancer-choreographer Yaelisa most successfully incorporated the spirit of nuevo flamenco, with its bursts of movement and asymmetrical contrasts, in choosing to combine the traditional, but widely differing, forms of the soleares and alegrias in a single piece. Contrastes.