ShadowLight, set to open at midmonth, comprises two dance-theatre works exploring ideas about passion, love, desire, and the shifting relationship between self and other.

The works, both of which are premiering at UC Davis, are by candidates for masters of fine arts degrees in choreography.

A Department of Theatre and Dance news release described the two works:

Spasm: as you perceive the edge of yourself at the moment of desire, by Randee Paufve — Spasm borrows images and text from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to explore the paradoxical nature of romantic love. Working with members of her Oakland-based company, Paufve creates an exquisite, explosive, sometimes naughty work based on ideas about the sensual imbalance of love, the prickly skin of passion, and the space of desire.

Spasm features an ensemble of dancers ranging in age from 24 to 76, including Bay Area dance veterans Frank Shawl and Diane McKallip. Longtime Paufve Dance collaborator Heather Heise creates an original sound score; set design is by Jen Michelson; costumes by Wenting Gao; and lighting by Tony Shayne.

Mostly in Blue-Hidden Syntax of Dreams in Translation, by Marija Krtolica — Exploring the displacement of words, personal realities and movement patterns that lead toward surprising realizations about previously unknown aspects of human interactions. Mostly in Blue looks into the process of creating meanings and stories out of what we sense, hear and see, prior to interpreting our experiences in the specific social context.

Krtolica creates a poetic, nonlinear, self-reflexive landscape in which fragments of off-balance movement and displaced emotional experiences are perpetually reinvented in the moment of performance.

Mostly in Blue-Hidden Syntax of Dreams in Translation is created in collaboration with six UC Davis students whose creative input, performing skills, diverse talent and personal interpretation of given material have informed both the content, and the form of the work.

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: ShadowLight

WHEN: 8 p.m. Feb. 14 (preview) and Feb. 15-16 and 21-23, and 2 p.m. Feb. 24

WHERE: Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

TICKETS: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787, or www.mondaviarts.org