Dance review: ‘Rupture’ stumbles at the Unknown Theater

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Lofty themes and captivating imagery are on display in choreographer Kingsley Irons’ “Rupture,” which opened the 2009 dance series at Hollywood’s Unknown Theater over the weekend. And Derrick Spiva Jr.’s original score, stuffed with gamelan, harp and haunting string sounds, catches the ear. It’s too bad, then, that the locally based Irons didn’t supply her seven female dancers with a larger movement vocabulary — a leap, perhaps, some muscular partnering, a vigorous trio or quartet ... please.

Instead, Irons has made a 50-minute dance-theater work that essentially collapses after some initially promising moments. Gladys Kawai Liu, seen throughout in shadow, handily manipulates tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes, while the six other women embody the dolls, including by giving them voice, no matter how overly earnest or shrill.

Liu’s shadowy world provides the dancers their cues — she points an exquisite finger or deposits the paper figures in bird cages (lighting design by John Ryman, set and installation by Camille Villanueva). Beginning prone, the sextet, clad in simple cream-colored leotards and skirts by Kara McLeod, then sit up and hold hands. When unattached, they often assume stiff, bent-wrist arm poses reminiscent of Nijinsky’s choreography for “The Rite of Spring” — an influence Irons cites in the press notes.

Other influences she mentions prove equally highbrow, with only the blatant nod to Kara Walker’s paper cutouts remotely successful. What are we to make of her citing French philosopher Michel Foucault’s treatise “Discipline and Punish” and Lars von Trier’s films “Dogville” and “Manderlay,” beyond that she was attempting to comment on mob mentality and the notion of being held prisoner, emotionally, physically or otherwise?

That said, once the doll-dancers are on their feet, they really need to go somewhere. Their collective angst (hunched over in unison, crawling on all fours) should be an impetus for them to break free.

But time and again, Irons misses opportunities to get her gals moving. Sure, they do a lot of laughing, walking and swaying, but only when they aren’t shuddering, gesticulating, entering and exiting. As to gender issues — female power, unity, whatever — they are superseded by the conformity factor, which may have been the point.

In any case, it’s hard to tell, as the overarching effect of limiting the dancers to simplistic, Barbie-like moves is more stultifying than satisfying.

-- Victoria Looseleaf

‘Rupture,’ Unknown Theater, 1110 Seward St., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Jan. 15-17; 6 p.m. Jan. 18. $18-$24. (323) 466-7781 or www.unknowntheater.com