Jennifer Poyen

The forces that shape a girl as she navigates the bumpy waters of adolescence is a persistent theme in Gina Angelique's passionate, socially aware choreography.

Her "Alice Lost Wonderland," an imaginative reinterpretation of Lewis Carroll's classic tale, brought to vivid life the confusing, dazzling and often painful experience of growing up. Angelique's surreal imagery shrewdly unveiled her heroine's growing awareness of the world.

And her earlier "Soul of a Young Girl . . . Dances of Anne Frank," which will be restaged next year, also delved into the shadows of a girl's harrowing coming-of-age.

With "Soulos . . . Silver," seen over the weekend at the (chilly, bring a blanket) Broadway Pier, Angelique takes up a similar theme, using the sea as a malleable metaphor for the perils and joys of life. Subtitled "a dance play about four fish out of water," the new work is the third in a series of solos set to contemporary music and aimed at a younger, nontraditional dance audience. Her earlier installments, "Soulos . . . Periwinkle" and "Soulos . . . Red," explored emotions associated with the colors of their titles.

In "Soulos . . . Silver," Angelique once again creates a total theater experience. A tour guide, Maggie Castranova (looking like a park ranger), beckons prospective viewers with a megaphone. Later, she solicits volunteers to hand and throw props to dancers Nikki Dunnan, Ericka Moore, Pauline Narciso and Jessica Valdez.

At first, the harbor setting, with its dramatic views, constant boat traffic and bracing wind, steals focus from the performers, who roll from the shadows as if from the watery depths onto the dimly lighted stage. Soon, though, the dancers -- clad in goggles and yellow and orange skins and adorned in body paint -- get the audience's attention by trading "Your Momma" jokes like approval-seeking adolescent boys. After a barrage of insults, they shed those personas by shaking their heads in a dizzying, compulsive fashion and crumpling into gestures that suggest vulnerability. Relinquishing inauthentic voices, they begin to discover, painfully at first, truer forms of self-expression. And they eventually shed their skins as well, in a symbolic throwing off of the yoke of parental authority. Angelique's expressionistic choreography is sometimes too literal here. It's the price she pays artistically -- and, it would seem, deliberately -- for communicating. "Soulos . . . Silver" is nothing if not accessible; even the small children at Friday night's show responded vocally to the dancers' physical humor. Mostly, though, there are images of arresting beauty, as when Moore, dancing with geometric abandon to a Tom Waits song, evokes a sailor's shore- bound longing for the sea. Another tantalizing tableau arrives when Dunnan takes the helm of an antique ship's wheel and the other dancers weave their bodies through the spokes, flailing as if caught. Such images of entrapment recur throughout the piece -- hooks hang creepily from mouths, prostrate bodies twist as if in pain. At other times, the dancers break free, as when they perform, to avant-garde jazz rhythms, an exuberant, floor-bound boogie-woogie.

Here and elsewhere, Angelique's choreography subverts modern-dance traditions to riot grrl purposes; for the San Diego dance-maker, feminist politics and hell-raising are all of a piece. The choreography is also interwoven with the dancers' poetic musings and recollections of youthful injuries that sometimes sound more therapeutic than artistically necessary. Yet the women's honesty in these moments also cuts to the core.

Valdez's dance with a flowing scarf -- sometimes stuffed in her mouth, sometimes draped over her head -- taps suffering and loss, but also pure joy. It's a solo that Isadora Duncan might have danced -- one woman's journey through life. And Dunnan's antagonistic solo with a blood-red scarf connects with the dark side of American girlhood. Stuffing the scarf down her throat and vomiting it back up, she offers a fierce dirge to the self-destructive impulse that haunts so many young women.

In the end, when the dancers gather at the back of the stage, turning to face the ocean, the natural setting floods back in, connecting meaningfully with their journey. It's a credit to Angelique's choreography and the dancers' passionate skill that the audience has been transported along with them.

** Choreographer: Gina Angelique. Costumes: Lolie Araujo. Set and lighting: Christopher Hall. Cast: Ericka Moore, Nikki Dunnan, Jessica Valdez, Pauline Narciso.

DANCE REVIEW

"Soulos . . . Silver"

Continues 8 p.m. Friday-Sunday. Broadway Pier, downtown. $5-$10 (donation); (619) 238-1153.