The University of Alaska Anchorage Dance in Performance showcase of new work by (usually) local choreographers breaks no new ground this year. But there's more to dance, and art in general, than innovation for the sake of innovation. There's also value in re-exploring familiar territory, executing with precision and personality and laying out an entertaining program.
Light-hearted and energetic "Slobeats," by UAA dance professor Brian Jeffery, opened the hour-long event. Red was the dominant color of the costumes for the dancers, who often paired and, by the end, one could see a highly stylized jitterbug theme had emerged.
Five women in half-masks and vaguely liturgical garb were featured in Crystal C. Dosser's "Personae," initially posed standing front-to-back in a circle as if a piece of architecture. They might have been temple priestesses, or perhaps caryatids, whose contortions often had some dancers trying to restrain one trying to move away from them before they returned to their initial position for the final frieze.
The Greek theme continued with "Stability" by Katie O'Loughlin. Three women on the ground in light skirts rose in relatively formal dances evoking the Three Graces of mythology, but not suggesting any program. As with Dosser's piece, the three returned to their on-the-ground pose for the closing.
Racin Engstrom's "Dandelion Fields" was the most complex piece. It opened somewhat chaotically, eight dancers doing at least three things at the same time in somewhat Jerome Robbins-y motions. But in the second half, the audience seemed charmed by the greater cohesion accompanied by the Punch Brothers' "I Blew it Off." A fetching gesture of hand-on-shoulder fluttering away was repeated with each return of the refrain.
The least expected piece was "Phurba" by Arlo Nasruk Davis, who was also the only dancer in the work. Dressed in a black kimono with a racing helmet on his head, he performed on his knees with the broad parallel and symmetric arm swings of Inuit dance. He then rose and made several processions across the floor of the Harper Theater, slowly walking, rolling, crawling, and finished repeating the Inuit gestures in a standing position.
Carmel Young's "Time Stops" began with a strobe effect and a solo dancer going to the floor as static was heard, suggesting the flatlining of a hospital patient. Two more dancers arrived and brought her back to her feet but eventually succumbed to entropic slowing, their hands swinging like a pendulums on a ticking clock.
"Seven Secrets" by Taylor Hicks wound up the night in a dramatic way, the women tending to swirl at the center of the fogged dance space while two men in long coats circled around them, appearing like wizards fighting for control over the women, or maybe hoodlums aching for a rumble before walking off. Then, with a fresh infusion of stage fog, the company returned to spy-movie music, mixing in handgun-shooting and martial arts poses before the climax, with a male standing on boxes surrounded by the women in glamor poses, raising two fingers in the air in simulation of a Beretta pistol and speaking the words, "Bond. James Bond."
It says something about the pacing of the show and the energy of the performers in that although the program was short and light, as modern dance goes, I have seldom seen a more attentive audience.
UAA DANCE IN PERFORMANCE will be presented at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday in the Harper Studio Theatre at the UAA Fine Arts Building. Tickets, $15, are available at uaatix.com.