The Spotted Owl.

In Jennifer Muller's new work, The Spotted Owl, the Marty Beller percussion ensemble is arranged unobtrusively upstage. Guest dancer Pascal Guillermie sits on the floor. Around him, covering the entire performing area, are fragments of brown cloth. They resemble the rain-soaked leaves of autumn.

In the feral reach of his arms and legs and the arch and languor of his torso, Guillermie appears to be a creature totally at home in a solitary landscape.

The poetry of this interlude is soon overtaken by a stream of talky people alternately complaining and articulating greedy fantasies. Throughout, a silent caretaker gathers the scraps and occasionally stops to dole them out. The seekers form lines before him and wait for their shares in the American dream.

Some receive a piece; some do not. An idealist emerges and lists the intangibles that form her secret world. As though she were Muller's own voice, she finally proclaims, "I am an American artist."

To a degree, The Spotted Owl is an extension of Point of View: A Case of Persimmons and Picasso, which Muller presented last season. In both she combines prose and dance to formulate a conscientious personal philosophy. In both, the words are intended to illuminate the dance, but their density weighs it down.

Muller has a natural facility for movement, and she reveals welcome moments of intuition. I wish she would trust both of these assets to the fullest and let them serve each other without intervention.

This was her twentieth-anniversary season. In celebration, she revived works covering the whole time span. Those from the seventies tend to be centered upon devices. In Lovers (1978) a recalcitrant male (Yasushi Tanaka) is eventually snared by his rapacious female (Leda Meredith). Their climax is signaled by the woman's slowly raising her extended leg. In "Armless," an excerpt from Strangers (1975), Maria Naidu and Michael Jahoda compulsively attack each other like fighting cocks while their arms are straitjacketed behind their backs. And in Tub (1974), a bit of adolescent eroticism ends predictably with a couple taking to the water.

During the 1980s, Muller gradually became more sophisticated in her use of music and decor. City (1988), with its agitated solos bristling from group passages, speaks of isolation in populated places. The swirl and drive of the dancing is punctuated by David Van Tieghem's minimalist score and Anton Van Dalen's Bauhaus backdrop plus, further downstage, a large, gloomy dog standing half concealed in the wings. Ken Tabachnick's restless lighting provides an additional ominous note.

Through the years Muller has attracted distinctive collaborators, and her excellent dancers seem to relish working with her. Perhaps, as the current decade winds down, she will achieve the balance of dance and insight of which she is capable. City points the way.