Thriving on Shaky Ground

Loretta Livingston may be one of the few people around who can look at the beleaguered sprawl of Los Angeles, study its turbulent past, embrace its seismic future and still describe her primary reaction as “tremendous joy.” How does that work?

It’s almost a Pollyanna thing. For the 46-year-old downtown choreographer, the city’s lack of an urban cultural “scene” means she isn’t pressured by trends; racial tension is eclipsed by the idea that “there are things that transcend skin color”; and even the inevitability of earthquakes is welcomed as just another inspiration for energetic movement--one that keeps us on a literal edge.

Livingston explains L.A. as a city on the move this way: It’s on its very own tectonic plate, which is shifting north an inch and three-quarters every year. Dance pieces like her “A History of Restlessness” (1992) have mined this shaky ground before, but she likes the idea so much that she’s named her newest evening-long dance work “Tales From the Plate, Moving North.” Commissioned by the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, it premieres June 14 at the Japan America Theatre in a festival called, ironically enough, “Dance Without Borders.”

“To me, the city is perpetually in motion,” Livingston says during an interview combined with a tour of a neighborhood she particularly likes, the area around her Bunker Hill condominium. “Cultures are moving, cars are moving, the earth under our feet is moving. You could say every city or human colony is that way, but I feel it particularly here. It’s a ride, and I love the ride.”

The gesture that accompanies this idea slices across her body in a repeated pathway that makes her hand look like it’s taking off again and again. At other times, she stretches her arms to their limits in sweeping arcs, as if the wide open spaces of Southern California are constantly inviting “big” movement. She talks enthusiastically about a “Pacific plate aesthetic” that comes to her through osmosis. “I love big, athletic movement, I love a lot of openness, I love risky things,” she says. “Or maybe exuberance would be a better word. The sheer joy of running through space.”

Standing at one edge of the Water Court at California Plaza in early afternoon sunlight, Livingston is still for a moment, watching the recently restored funicular railway called Angel’s Flight. Fascinated by local history, she explains that the tiny hillside railway was originally built in 1901 by Col. J.W. Eddy. At the time, he wanted to connect the genteel neighborhood of Victorian houses that preceded the high-rises on this hill with the mercantile district below.

On reopening day of Angel’s Flight last February, Livingston and her dancers took a ride, one of many research trips for “Tales.” The piece has been in the works sporadically since the fall of 1993, interrupted by tours of Livingston’s enormously popular “Grandma Moses Project”--rural vignettes inspired by the paintings of Anna Mary Moses--and the 10th anniversary season of Loretta Livingston and Dancers in 1994.

“For this piece, we started with a lot of field trips,” she says. “I kidnapped the dancers every Saturday and didn’t tell them where we were going. Then we’d ride the subway to Union Station, La Placita and Olvera Street. And we went to the La Brea Tar Pits, or to the beach or for a day up in the mountains, where we did improvisations and movement games. Even if the information doesn’t end up in the surface of the work, all those layers of experience are there.

“And the dancers are always game. I can’t say enough good about my dancers. We’ve developed such a trust and a rapport. I need them to trust me, because I need to try things that are potentially . . . ridiculous. And they give me permission to do that. They’re heroic, they’re just heroic.”

The lunch-hour activity around the plaza makes Livingston think about other heroic dancers she has worked with in the many outreach projects that make up much of her living. A line of schoolchildren snaking out of the subway below reminds her of the residencies she does in downtown schools, sponsored by the Los Angeles Music Center; and as we pass the nearby Angelus Plaza, she talks with affection about the movement workshops she and the company have done there with senior citizens.

A week before, several of Livingston’s senior movers from Angelus Plaza had been in the front row of the Japan America Theatre, eagerly awaiting a preview of “Tales From the Plate.” Selected scenes and a small buffet were served up for company friends, board members and contributors. Livingston often stages these “sneak looks” to get a feeling for the way a piece plays for an audience.

The evening began with the “Tales” prologue, featuring athletic, almost tumbling passages by Madeline Soglin, Monica Favand, Michael Mizerany and David Plettner. Surrounding them were set-pieces of iconographic images of Los Angeles--palm trees, two cars, a gun and a knife. Designed by artist Frank Romero, they all have the rounded, ‘50s look Romero describes as a formative visual influence from his upbringing in East L.A.

In “Tales,” Livingston herself embodies other familiar L.A. symbolism, wearing sandals, a brightly colored short skirt and a pair of white feathered wings as the character Angelita Luz. Her normally brown brush-cut, dyed angel white, makes her look more than a bit like Annie Lennox. In the prologue, she rides the bottom half of a child-size car and follows the action somewhat peripherally, occasionally looking disturbed.

“She sighs from fatigue, and there’s not a lot she can do,” Livingston says about Angelita. “Guardian angels can’t interfere a lot, as I understand it. They watch without being judgmental. I think things have gotten out of hand for her. But the thing that never leaves her is her intrigue with the place.”

The last section presented at the preview was “Jesus de los Temblores,” (Jesus of the Earthquakes) in which Plettner looks like a cross between a surfer, a coyote and a fundamentalist minister. Barefoot, in a trendy tan suit, he alternates between cat-walk strutting, shock-therapy shaking and some pretty mean barking that might be a version of speaking in tongues. Perhaps forgetting that L.A. is a renowned outpost of the odd, Livingston had worried in her introduction that this scene was “completely off the wall.”

After the performance, the Jesus character was further explained by Plettner, who is also Livingston’s husband (they met while dancing for Bella Lewitzky): “Loretta had an idea in her mind of a white kid who just had an affinity, a love for the Latino culture. And also became an evangelistic preacher and had a psychic sensitivity to earthquakes. I don’t think that has to come off as literal imagery--the character has evolved on its own. “

The taped score for “Tales,” played at the preview, sounds orchestrally lush, with bits of cartoon or carnival tunes tossed in. But the music for the Jesus section wasn’t complete that night, and composer Murielle Hamilton watched from the audience, getting ideas. Afterward, she explained that she prefers to see the movement before translating it into music. Especially since, after initially talking about the project with Livingston, she had begun work on a score that had to be scrapped early on.

“After our first discussion, I thought, ‘Oh, yeah, multiculturalism, you know, some gamelan with a little bit of mariachi trumpet and electric guitar,’ you know. Then when I saw an open rehearsal and the dancers performing, I just heard the music very clearly. And I came up with a concept which was in a sense very foreign to one’s idea of what L.A. is about. I mean, L.A. is not really about orchestral music and classically rooted idiom and all that.”

Set designer Romero, also in attendance at Japan America Theatre, made his own adjustments, checking out the angle of the gun and deciding which way the police car should point. He had with him the riotously colored sketches of the way he would paint the cutouts back in his studio.

Energy for the project was running high among Livingston supporters. One company board member characterized it as “a loving tribute to L.A. by someone who loves L.A.” Or as Livingston says, “We don’t make work here like other places. It’ll be a really fun and off-the-wall evening.”

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“TALES FROM THE PLATE, MOVING NORTH” with Loretta Livingston and Dancers. Japan America Theatre, 244 S. San Pedro St. Date: Friday, 8 p.m. Prices: $18-$20. Phone: (213) 680-3700.