DANCE REVIEWS : DANA REITZ’ MAGIC, WIT, HALF-TRUTHS

Dana Reitz calls her style of improvisational dance “stream-of-consciousness moving.” But in “Circumstantial Evidence,” her unaccompanied solo performance at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions on Friday, revelations of consciousness proved less the issue than streams of movement: nonstop dance-flow.

Indeed, in her loose, long-sleeved silver blouse and full, pewter-colored skirt, her shoulder-length hair flying, Reitz looked almost literally mercurial and she instinctively responded to her changing environment (defined by shifting patterns and densities of light) with surges of liquid motion.

Bending and swaying in place or gliding along a path of light while her arms swung up and out in big arcs, she traced intricate loops with her restless rippling/twisting hands and occasionally nodded her head in sharp, swift spasms.

At her most magical (but perhaps least dancey), she reached into the empty space in front of her and seemed to braid or weave the air, her fingers spread wide as if holding thick strands of light, her head shaking slightly, as she very deliberately yet rhythmically mimed this mythic process.

The problem: Rarely in the 50-minute performance did Reitz use her lower limbs and torso to any significant purpose; most of “Circumstantial Evidence” remained gestural or semaphoric: intriguing hand-signals in a private code.

It certainly affirmed dance as a medium for deep personal expression. It also gloried in the ephemeral nature of that medium: the moment of here-and-now shared by dancer and audience. But it never did more than suggest the full interpretive resources of the body. And physical compromise in this type of dancing is nothing less than a profound evasion of responsibility. When the body speaks, partial truths just aren’t enough.