London Contemporary Dance Theatre.

London Contemporary Dance Theatre's popularity rose to new heights last year when it presented Christopher Bruce's Rooster to music by the Rolling Stones [see Reviews/International, March 1993, page 94]. The ballet kindled excitement among new audiences and challenged the company to keep that interest blazing. Since then, the troupe has risen to the occasion by producing not one or two new works but six, with subjects that range from a legendary flying water god to the release of Nelson Mandela. So it is especially sad that this was the company's last season in its present form.

At Sadler's Wells there were two premieres - Sand Skin, by Frenchman Angelin Preljocaj, and The Previous Evening, by American Amanda Miller.

Sand Skin is a concentrated sifting and new molding of a longer work Preljocaj made for his own company two years ago. It is about evolution and survival, and there is much Jurassic Park imagery - at times, the scaly-stockinged dancers move with arms raised aloft, wrists crooked, reminiscent of dinosaurs, while an all male team scuttles on all fours like smaller ungainly reptiles.

In contrast, Miller's choreography for The Previous Evening has a sharp attack and is shot through with angular grace, knock-kneed jumps, and tribal fervor. A pas de deux features a woman's fast, twisted leap onto a man's chest, where she sticks like Velcro, her arms and legs arching behind her. This movement is repeated by all in the final moments of the ballet, with an added vampirish nuzzle to the men's necks. The men fall prostrate to the floor and the women slowly encircle them as the light fades.

The Previous Evening challenges its viewers to find the choreography's deeper meaning, a search not helped at all by Miller's fathomless program note. On the surface, the work's dry humor, childish games, and self-obsession suggest party guests who won't leave. Sometimes Miller makes her dancers stretch tall, like curious prairie dogs: knees slightly bent, shoulders hunched, and heads high and alert. At other times they walk, turned sideways, a la Faune.

Carefully placed rocks lined up in front of a white backdrop (setting by Seth Tillet) evoke the tranquillity of a Japanese garden, while the music, an homage to John Cage by Fred Frith, ejects sounds of walking on broken glass and wind whining, and concludes with two clarinetists in the dress circle emitting eerie tones before a voice booms, "Don't you think it's enough?" Still mystified, most of the audience seemed to agree.