DANCE AND MUSIC REVIEWS : BATSHEVA COMPANY IN COSTA MESA

The 17-member Batsheva Dance Company performed a mixed bill with exemplary theatrical power Sunday at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. But only two works merited such intensity.

In Mark Morris’ “Canonic Studies” (1983), the dancers showed brilliant formal technique and a firm grasp of Morris’ wicked digs at other choreographers.

Against Harriet Cavalli’s witty piano arrangements of various waltzes, dancers in black-and-white practice clothes performed alone or in varying combinations, the common element being strict, imitative movement. One man partnered a woman with her exact steps, but one elegant beat behind. Five dancers shrugged, cricked their necks and otherwise minimally twitched like overwound but out-of-sync cuckoo clocks.

One saw a little Balanchine here, some Robbins there, plus Graham, Laura Dean and who knows who else. Morris’ audacity and witty musicality swept all before it.

Similarly, in Daniel Ezralow’s ambitious theater piece “Svsplkt”--the title is a nonsense word--the dancers ranged from high energy to moving tragedy.

The work, set to Indonesian music and songs by Tom Waits, portrayed a society in degeneration--moving from loose-limbed disco dancing to late-night eavesdropping on empty urban lives (half-dressed figures seen through Venetian blinds), to rejection of recaptured innocence, embodied in Hindu celebrants.

The result? A broken, crippled, half-naked individual (Bruno De-Saint Chaffray) crossing the stage in agonized, twisted steps--yet for all that, still suggesting some irreducible incandescent dignity. This image of horror was multiplied with similar human casualties, but Chaffray was alone at the end.

This amazing work wasn’t completely coherent: Ezralow’s image of Eastern innocence was hard to take so seriously, and one felt empathy for the figures in the opening. But the final images were crushing.

In contrast, Robert North’s overwrought, abstract Spanish-styled “Entre Dos Aguas,” which followed, for all its energy looked simple-minded and stagey, as did Gene Hill Sagan’s vacuous beefcake ballet “Suite en bleu,” which opened the program.

The company also will appear at the University of Judaism tonight.