Back in the dim mists of time, dancers were heroes, superhuman in strength and pulchritude.  Though this tradition has suffered its detractors (from Judson on), perhaps few have been as single-mindedly eager as Pam Tanowitz, founder of Open 24 Hours Dance Company (St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, June 15-18, 1995).  Tucking tongue in cheek, she fashions her dancers as ugly ducklings.  Alienated in their discomfort, they twitch with incipient madness, and their limbs seem screwed on backward, oddly jutting and swiveling.

There's something worthy about so determined a quest for a new take on the vocabulary of dance.  When she's on the mark, Tanowitz locates a sharp, off-kilter energy (in the 1993 Wild Card) or a strange, skewed beauty (Ballrooms& Bathrooms, 1994).