Miki Listz's choreography is a rare blend of imagination, insight and humor. Friday and Saturday evening she created a mosaic of movement, dialogue and images, on the stage of Charlottesville High School Performing Arts Center.

The audience appeared thoroughly entertained, energized, and impressed by the excellent dancing and exciting mixed media piece "Blindsight." But why such a small audience when ballet concerts and local dance schools can fill the 1,000-seat auditorium? The major barrier to public understanding of Ms. Listz' work is unfamiliarity with, and lack of exposure to, modern dance and dance theater in Charlottesville.

Modern dance is often labeled as abstract, because its movements are not traditional in form, style, or aesthetic value. Ms. Listzs' new piece "Blindsight" bridges the gap between abstract dance and everyday reality. She combines nonliteral choreography with the presence of objects and scenes from everyday life, all occuring simultaneously on the stage. There is a living room scene set up to the left, a large video screen to the right, and three smaller televisions placed unobtrusively in other corners of the stage. A large screen in the center rear provides a space for projected slides. The lighted plexiglass platform which appears midway through the piece creates the illusion of a stage within a stage. Viewing "Blindsight" is to experience how the brain can focus on an array of images or select out and focus on one or two. The audience could chose to focus on any or all of six distinct elements.

One element featured the intriguingly beautiful, intricate, and fascinating slides of McGuffey artists Edith Arbaugh, Joan Cabell, Rosamund Casey, Barbara MacCallum, Judy McLeod and Anne Slaughter. A second was the dramatic scene, created by four actors, of the stresses experienced by a typical American household, a single working mom, an elderly relative and two sons. A third was the 10 dancers dressed in black with pieces of clothing sewn on their leotards, making them seem representative of the mass of humanity. Most of the movement for these dancers consisted of pedestrian motions; walking, standing, running and sitting.

A fourth element was Ms. McClymonds solo dancing, a total constrast to the harsh, angular, abrupt, movements of the dancers in black. She appears magically, as if out of a dream, mid-way through "Blind- sight" in the rear right corner of the stage, opening up yet another stage space to the audience awareness. Her movements are slow, wavelike undulations of arms and body with legs extending effortlessly into beautiful developpes and arabesques. Ms. McClymonds is clearly a very accomplished dancer and a joy to watch.

A fifth was the large video screen at the far left corner of the stage. It showed everything from "Wheel Of Fortune," "General Hospital" and "Hee-Man" cartoons to commercials, wrestling matches and talk shows. The sixth element was the taped score by composer John Adams, who recently finished the opera "Nixon in China." The music was as hauntingly beautiful as the slides, and as dramatically exciting as the acting and dancing. This piece would constantly change as a viewing experience, because of the choice or chance to focus on one or a combination of the images in varying sequences. We may be momentarily "blinded" by the sight, but primarily we are moved, stimulated, horrified, and awed by the images of beauty and harshness in the video age.

Unfortunatly for many people in Charlottesville "Blindsight" has come and gone. Unlike a painting that can be viewed for a long time, or recordings and video films that can be listened to and seen whenever we wish, dance can only be satisfactorily experienced when it is performed. Ms. Listz challenged the audience to experience something new and daring. Her work is a challenge to all of us to leave our munchies, and couches, turn off the tube and regain our senses.