MANUEL-KENNEDY

Like their two-part satire “Our Hero” on the “Out of Dance” series at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in April, two new Luis Manuel-Mel Kennedy pieces presented Saturday at the Eilat Gordin Gallery in West Hollywood centered on the volatile physical or animal impulses barely hidden beneath our social conditioning.

Using a pantomime-based movement style, Manuel and Kennedy showed how out of touch we’ve become, how the familiar rituals of our lives and (especially) jobs estrange us from our own natures.

In the solo “Killing Time,” Manuel performed cycles of pointless activity (pacing, for instance) that objectified the tedium of waiting. He then symbolically escaped the constraints of his humanity to become the timepiece ruling him. Manuel is a compelling performer, but too many ideas here remained juiceless premises rather than fully developed kinetic statements.

In contrast, “Hands Off” offered an imaginatively physicalized encounter in a sculpture exhibition between an archetype of look-but-don’t-touch propriety (Kim Pistone) and an unconventional fellow (Manuel) inclined to use all his senses all the time. Terrific stuff, funny but always purposeful, sexy but resolutely unsentimental--with Pistone and Manuel equally exciting and unpredictable in their quasi-romantic contest of wills.

Clearly, Manuel and Kennedy have a distinctive viewpoint, and if their style isn’t exactly dance or mime, it harnesses elements of both brilliantly.