Nicola Hawkins Dance Company.

TSAI PERFORMANCE CENTER, BOSTON UNIVERSITY, BOSTON JANUARY 10-11, 1997 REVIEWED BY IRIS FANGER

British-born and trained, Nicola Hawkins came to Boston five years ago and established a company of women that has gained a wide following. Hawkins is the troupe's sole choreographer; she dances in some of the works. She's a storyteller who creates characters and sketches of scenarios for audiences to complete in their own imaginations.

The endeavor is a reminder of the breadth of modern dance's heritage: barefoot, expressive works based on techniques that range from the swooping runs, skips, and jumps of Duncan to an occasional Grahamlike centering of emotion in the pelvis and the lyricism of Limon. Each piece is impressive in its attention to detail and its careful rehearsal by the troupe, which includes about a dozen dancers plus Hawkins and several guests. What's wanting is a sense of risk, a breakaway from the expected.

For the company's winter season Hawkins presented two new works. Daybreak and a Candle End was created to a subdued score so well put together from the music of Tunde Jegede, Alan Hovhaness, James MacMillan, and Maya Jobarteh that it sounds like the work of one composer. What's the Time Mr. Wolf? fits the footwork of a children's game to music by Handel. The forty-minute-long Silk Patches on Mortal Dress, which premiered last June, is set to a collage of middle-European melodies, including klezmer passages and selections from the ensemble Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, to evoke the daily patterns and rituals of an outsider community.

Daybreak best displays Hawkins's gift for evocative stage pictures that frame the choreography, although a sameness of tone tends to make the work into a series of encounters rather than a drama. The scene is a hospital room with a man lying still on a bed. One woman enters to dance a passionate solo, then is surprised by the arrival of a second, younger, woman with a solo no less intense. Two small "boys" enter and play near, under, and on top of the bed's railings, followed by a trio of prim caretakers. As the work progresses, the characters remain onstage, watching the others. The ending, with the women in a repetitive fast run around the bed, suggests the making of a magic circle to ward off the Angel of Death.

Hawkins danced the opening and closing solos in Mr. Wolf, incorporating tag, hopscotch, and cavorting for a corps of high-spirited dancers, although the theme of children at play in the schoolyard is much less compelling than Handel's music. As a performer, Hawkins is lovely to watch, investing every musical phrase with a fullness of motion and gesture.