Weekend Review : Dance : ‘Mother Ditch’ Delivers Bold Sights, Weak Sound

You really have to admire the scope of a dance project that has a couple of nervy little Volkswagen bugs drive into the shallow rushing water of the wide drainage ditch called the Los Angeles River. While an accordion band gathers nearby. Neither the cars nor the gang from Dave’s Accordion School got to do much else on Saturday night when Collage Dance Theatre presented “Mother Ditch” in Atwater Village.

But, it was the kind of performance you could leave saying, “I liked the part where the woman standing in the canoe playing her violin drifted on.” Or, “You know, I thought sure the guy who looked dead in the water all that time would get hypothermia.”

Or, you could ponder why all these elements had been brought together. It was one of choreographer Heidi Duckler’s Urban Extinction works, which generally try to comment on the relationship between nature and modern life. For “Mother Ditch,” the audience gathered on one of the river’s concrete banks, facing the Golden State Freeway, a half-moon and four huge, flat pylons, which used to hold up a bridge.

Four dancers spent some time slogging across the water in high boots, occasionally writhing in a spotlight on the opposite shore, tossing pails of water or seeming to hoe the concrete river bottom. At one point, a young girl inside a shopping cart appeared, and trash was gathered from the water around her.

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In an extended duet, dancers made shapes with two small wire bed frames or jumped and flopped down uncomfortably on them.

Projected on the bridge supports throughout were words and numbers, simply and stylishly designed by Joel Breaux and Robert Gallerani. Sometimes the words were water-related (blood/flood), or ecological (clean/demean) and sometimes they were phrases from popular ad campaigns. At the end of the hourlong piece, canoe-violinist Toni Marcus glided off, a wading woman wrapped in nylon gauze let the fabric float downstream and a half-clad barefoot climber (Steve Contreras), who had just scaled a pylon, held high a flaming torch, then tossed it into the river.

Among the disappointments were almost all aural elements. No amplification meant that an opening ceremony by the Gabrieleno Tongva Tribal Council and the Voices of Inspiration Choir could not be heard. You could hear the Flaming Knights Motorcycle Club, which revved briefly on the road opposite, and the accordions, which played mostly extended “om”-like sounds.

As a happening that tried to gather the past and present energies of the area, it could have used some volume and a few changes in the drifting energy level. Maybe even a few accordion songs--now that might be making use of the environment.