PERFORMANCE ART REVIEW : ‘Car Pool’ Takes Worthwhile Trip

All you need is a few good riders to organize a successful “Car Pool�--the title of Thursday night’s program at Highways, the new Santa Monica performance space. Despite a two-car collision and some slow traffic, the trip (continuing through Sunday) proved worth taking.

Performing Liz Lerman’s “Journey,� Suchi Branfman--a wonderfully tensile and intelligent dancer--told the first-person story of a child’s cognitive development, simultaneously translating each spoken word into a spare, swift, meaningful gesture.

In Branfman’s own three-part “Through the Motions,� she was a gregarious Southern lady distributing condoms to the audience, an impassive reader from the appointment book of an AIDS patient, and a dancer whose face and body registered flickering moments of joy and defeat before concentrating their energy into fierce, stage-circling runs.

In “Secrets of a Samurai Centerfielder,� Dan Quong used a bizarrely effective combination of campy humor and didacticism (an expertly produced slide show) to present an account of his family’s emigration to the United States and shameful treatment by the government during World War II.

Moments of Linda Carmella Sibio’s portrait of madness in “Blow-Out� were memorable, especially her first appearance, in a bouffant party dress, shrieking about hoped-for sexual favors from movie stars, complete with graphic gestures.

Keith Antar Mason’s “The Truth That Never Was�--about an urban black man’s attempt to deal with his African roots--was waylaid by hard-to-follow, stridently declaimed poetry and a poverty of movement invention for the African (Dion Snider).

The evening’s disaster was “Cowboygirl,� by Linda Hammett. Supposedly inspired by the history of women in the West, the piece involved pointless tussles and gyrations by Hammett and Sarah Mata, both in sexy spandex, and several reprises of Hammett’s inane title song.