The New York Times<br/>

DANCE REVIEW; Pose. Stop. Hit Another.<br/>
Don't Forget to Thrust.<br/>
By JENNIFER DUNNING<br/>
Published: December 22, 2000<br/><br/>

One aim of the Complexions modern-dance troupe is to bring together dancers
from a variety of styles and races. Another is to give dancers a chance to use their
gifts in perhaps unexpected ways, as composers and costume designers.
Complexions is also a vehicle for Dwight Rhoden, its choreographer, and
Desmond Richardson, its lead dancer, who founded the troupe together in 1994.
Both were celebrated on Sunday night in ''Higher Ground,'' a benefit presented by
Complexions at the Hudson Theater.<br/><br/>
Mr. Rhoden is very much a choreographer of his time. His dances brim with
fashionably taut, jagged bodies and high-energy, go-for-broke movement. The
style owes something to Ulysses Dove, Donald Byrd and William Forsythe. But
Mr. Rhoden adds an eye for sleek 21st-century graphic design and a taste for
theatricality and the climactic. The general choreographic rule seems to be to hit
a pose and then move on quickly into another. And the dancers look as though
they are enjoying every impolite thrust, spin and cling.<br/><br/>
Three hours of this was a little long on dazzle. But several of the program's 17 new
and recent pieces did stand out from the stylized fray. ''Please, Please, Please,'' set
to James Brown's ''It's a Man's World,'' is a good old-fashioned sexual tease for
Sarita Allen in her diva vamp mode and Marc Mann as the virile mouse whom
she crushes.<br/><br/>
Mr. Rhoden does fresh things with another familiar motif in his new ''Gone,'' a
male trio set to Odetta's powerful, haunting version of ''Another Man Done
Gone.'' Working against the slow building of the music, Mr. Rhoden and his
dancers (Sant'gria Bello, Mr. Mann and William Isaac) capture all the pent-up
force and angry, resigned frustration of the song. And, intriguingly, strange
things happen to Mr. Rhoden's quick-thrusting style as interpreted by Carmen de
Lavallade and Gus Solomons Jr., two veteran dancers with a lot of individual
style and presence, in ''It All,'' a dramatic duet set to a song by Bjork.<br/><br/>
A solo from Mr. Rhoden's new ''Fauve,'' set to music by Antonio Carlos Scott, had
Mr. Richardson interacting with a lush headpiece of trailing flowers designed by
Richard De Chazal in ways that exploited the dancer's sensuous, rough-surfaced
physicality. The new ''Wonder-Full,'' danced to music by Stevie Wonder, was a
freshly sensual encounter for two individualistic performers (Mr. Richardson and
Elizabeth Parkinson). And ''Growth,'' set to music by Steve Reich, offered a
window into Sheri Williams's great gift for capturing the finest shifts of dynamics
and emotions.<br/>

Michael Korsch designed the evening's stylish lighting. Patrick Swayze was the
host.