In its debut at The ARTS at Marks Garage, the newly established Convergence Dance Theatre proves to be a young modern dance company of talent and promise.

Directed by Jennifer Butler Shannon, the troupe's 10 women are all strong dancers (most of them former or current University of Hawai'i-Manoa students).

The performance, "Tread Lightly," addresses environmental issues through seven works by six choreographers plus a handful of comic entr'actes that fill time between numbers.

The program opens with Jamie Nakama's "... Return to Wonder," which sets the tone for the green-themed evening. With a video projected behind her, Nakama performs a solo of her own choreography, reflecting and reacting to the screen images that range from nature at its best to assembly lines and industrial pollution.

Nakama, who also produced the video, upstages herself with her own film. Younger audience members may easily take in the multi-imagery of simultaneous screen and stage events, but those of us not raised on MTV, video and computer games might find it harder to split our focus. Wisely, Nakama places herself almost always directly downstage of the video, making it less problematic to look from dancer to screen and back.

Two of the most successful pieces, Shannon's "Energy" and Traci Chun's "Leaves of Life," have previously been seen in UH Footholds concerts. Both works reflect the UH dance program's fine training in technique and composition. The dancers jump high one moment, then fall silently to the ground the next.

While Shannon's upbeat, colorful dancers leap, spin, run and swing to a percussive rhythmic accompaniment, Chun's more introspective piece, danced to a John Adams-like score, swoops and dips, then tilts or falls, like leaves tossed by the wind.

Jacqueline Nii's "A Breeze Through Time" is equally well composed with the dancers swinging, falling, rebounding and running. Highly dynamic to begin with, as the dance winds down the performers walk slowly toward the audience as though they will move through us and beyond.

Rich in movement and strong in their compositional elements, these quartets impress with skilled movements and elegant use of space. Speaking of space, these works deserve and cry out for a larger stage than The ARTS at Marks Garage can provide.

The distraction of film imagery (a powerful collage created by Ted Obringer) detracts also from the otherwise haunting final work, "Tread Lightly ...," jointly choreographed by Shannon and Marcia Sakamoto Wong. The dance, in four sections, progresses from a marching ceremony of six dancers in front of troublesome, heart-wrenching footage of soldiers in Iraq and survivors at home, to its poignant finale, Shannon on a bare stage reaching up and outward, arms alternately clasped tightly together and then widespread, as though yearning for a person long gone.