‘Quest’ Musicians Supply Interesting Movement

When the Brockus Project Dance Company and the Somei Yoshino Taiko Ensemble got together on the stage of the Ivar Theatre in Hollywood for the premiere of “Quest” Wednesday night, the most interesting dance came from the musicians. Odd, but not, unfortunately, entirely unheard of.

At the start of the 90-minute performance, the four players were arranged at the edge of the stage, three of them on stools, draped in long black and white robes, their backs to the audience as their arms repeatedly swept overhead and paused. Then, they slowly claimed their drums and built a rhythmic tower of sound. For the several sections of dance that followed, they provided minimal percussion, faint vocalizing and the occasional flute tune, both onstage and off. In two extended musical sections, their dance-like embroidery again rose to the surface.

Often settling into deep warrior lunges beside the large taiko drums, they created individual gestural patterns, sometimes leaping away from a drum, almost seeming to perform an incantation before returning to the majestic, choreographed reaching that preceded contact with the drum. One bit of steely frenzy from Jimi Nakagawa was particularly thrilling, although the ensemble’s director Bruce “Mui” Ghent, Ellen Reiko Bepp and Kallan Yoichi Nashimoto also had their moments.

The dancers (choreographer Deborah Brockus and five others) seemed caught in a time warp--somewhere between the naive, amateur “interpretive dance” of the early or mid-20th century (ponderous slow-motion and statue poses) and ta-da moments of jazzy flinging.

Throughout, not much space was disturbed by the dancers; all impulses looked surface-deep, tentative, except for flashy brief solos. Whereas the musicians sliced space and made it tingle. This revived the idea of a quest, the title concept approached so flaccidly in the choreography. The drummers channeled energy with adventurous vigor; they sent it out, welcomed it back, built on it and made a moving art form in the process.