DANCE REVIEW : CHOPSTICKS, SNEAKERS: STYLES OF ASIAN <i> ANGST</i>

Among the burning issues facing our society, nobody up to now, it seems, has set a high priority on the plight of certain young Asian-American women: the ones with too exaggerated a notion of their own bruised sensitivity and too much guilt over all the new clothes in their closets.

Yet this is the turf staked out by Chopsticks and Sneakers, a four-woman local modern dance confederacy that borrowed Saturday from the cultures of China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines--as well as the West--for a polyglot festival of studied alienation.

In an eight-part program at the House, these women never let us learn much about them, other than their desire to merchandise a “broken-blossom� sensibility in facile etudes about estrangement: Art Dance with a vengeance.

In “The Order of Things,� by Japanese-American Heidi Ashley, the women rebelled against fashion and round-eyed archetypes of beauty--but somehow ended up just as chic and glamorous in matching loose-fitting blouses as they had in the look they had rejected. A cruel fate--to have facial planes that stop traffic no matter what you wear--but Ashley never flinched from depicting it.

She also never created any remarkable movement. Indeed, both here and in her “Red-Haired Ghost� (about a child of mixed blood), Ashley could have made her points better, and faster, if she gave the audience snapshots of her tableaux and a printed copy of June Kino’s texts. The actual movement (and performances) were mere filler.

In “Elusive, a Dream� and “Heart Set,� Seoul-born Hae Kyung Lee wrapped in MTV-glitz some promising insights about how we face a world we fear. In each, Lee confirmed a strong sense of expressive movement, but the latter probably looked far more compelling in practice clothes than in the ridiculous science-fiction gladiator drag worn on Saturday. Sometimes style can kill.

Philippine-born Betsy Escandor offered two tepid, conventional, weakly executed pure-movement pieces: “Dreamstep,� a solo exploring liquid undulation and “Dansa,� a show-dance trio tinged with Middle Eastern influences.

Though the premises of Canton-born Angelia Leung’s ceremonial “Stones Within� and post-modern “Cross Country Dance� came, respectively, from Kei Takei and Remy Charlip, she proved the most adept at choreographic development on Saturday, the least ensnared by non-dance distractions and an accomplished performer, too.