ODC/San Francisco.

JOYCE THEATER JULY 21-AUGU5T 2, 1997 REVIEWED BY ALICE NAUDE

Ten years ago ODC/San Francisco developed a danced version of the well-loved children's book, The Velveteen Rabbit. Now choreographers Brenda Way and Kimi Okada have turned their attention to an older audience, creating Outawak, a youth-theater-cum-rock-opera tale of Cosmo, a bored teenager sucked into cyberspace where he reconciles logic with feeling.

Children's theater often falls into the trap of high moralism, reducing life to sharply defined opposites. Outawak makes this mistake--almost--but saves itself by shying light in tone and generous in spirit. This is a big show, with inventive costumes and high energy. And while choreography does not carry the piece, original live music by the Paul Dresher Ensemble mixes idioms and merges them to successfully pull off the production's core idea that divergent elements can be fused to create something more powerful than their individual parts.

Way formed ODC in 1971; many of the works choreographed for this season of New York premieres have an old baby-boomer ethos of group harmony and individual freedom. Though this makes some of her repertory look dated, it is well suited to a work for young audiences. The main characters are outstanding performers with a strong theatrical presence: DJ (Damon White) and Molly XYZ (Heather Tietsort) play resistance leaders in the divided city of Wak, where King (Kevin Ware) rules the logic and numbers-based Numeragua, and Queen (Shannon Mitchell) presides over the emotional realm of Verbia.

Unfortunately, the choreography for these groups, or gangs, only references dance instead of embracing it. Numeragua is portrayed through pedestrian movement with some jazz and modern steps thrown in as if with quotation marks around them. Verbia is dominated by a tongue-in-cheek ballet danced to a medley of famous opera moments from Carmen, Die Walkure and Tristan und Isolde. These gestures toward idiom on a company of terrific performers diminishes the power of the piece. With gutsier choreography, the disharmony between the two worlds might have been more resonant. But in the end, Cosmo [Daniel Levi-Sanchez) is the only one who gets to do any exciting dancing. His hip-hop-based pops and spins seem to spring out of a real joy in movement and are satisfying until you begin to wish that more of this good stuff had been thrown in along the way

ODC's repertory has a similar code-for-dance feeling in the company choreography, while individual performances are outstanding. Okada's Archipelago puts men and women in Catholic school--type uniforms and mixes small gestures--fingers pointing and making the shape of a gun--with some beautiful moments in which chains of dancers are dragged across the floor. John Somebody showcases the dancing of Ware, whose Bruce Lee kicks are precise and restless Brian Fisher, whose lies off the floor have the quiet grace of a gymnast; and LeviSanchez, again a dervish of hip-hop energy. A longer piece, Under the Jaguar Sun, feels static even though its narrative line of sexual liberation is performed with touching exuberance.