By Rita Felciano

SUE LI- Jue's Held So Close ... Remembering the Poets of Angel Island is an ambitious, uneven homage to the thousands of Chinese immigrants who were detained on San Francisco's Angel Island while awaiting their fate – permission to enter the country or deportation back to China. Held, a big project for Facing East Dance and Music, features a dozen dancers, Jeff Chan's excellent original score performed live and on tape, text by Lisa Wallgren Okuhn based on detainees' poems, film by Robert Yee, projections by Thomas Wong, and a spare but telling set by Richard Jue.

In 14 scenes, the performance is an emotional roller-coaster. Inspired by the anonymous poems and thoughts they carved into barrack walls, Li-Jue tries to evoke rage, loneliness, and uncertainty – with mixed results. Too often scenes – particularly those for the ensemble – lack enough internal momentum to build a sense that there is something larger at work.

The choreography is strongest when Li-Jue creates solo or duet passages. "To Be Held," an evocative duet for John Chung and Howard Tom, concentrates frustration and the fear of being forgotten in two individuals – and in the process illustrates how different styles, in this case, modern dance and martial arts, can coexist. Chung's tiny, silken hand gestures float with a breathtaking elegance that is complemented by his firmly planted legs. In the poignant "Iron Knot," Frances Cachapero duets with the female warrior from Chinese mythology – danced by Rae Chang – she dreams of being. Wushu-trained Chang uses powerful sword thrusts, long lines, and grounded turns to hurl Cachapero (who gives one of the strongest performances of her career) into spastic outbursts of helpless rage. Colleen Quen's generally excellent costumes – lean and black for Chang, white and rumpled for Cachapero – are particularly appropriate.

Li-Jue performs in a pair of duets that are eloquent though spare and simple. "Of/Fences," a mother-daughter duet (performed with Jue's daughter, Perry Jue), follows a mother's struggle to save herself from drowning in fear without alarming her child. The girl playfully imitates her mother's every move, and their interactions are highlighted against the woman's introspection and her silent despair. With Tom, she performs "Apart," based on a love letter written by an internee to his wife that encapsulates the lonely, tender, gut-wrenching world that so many must have experienced – it feels like one long sigh. As an exquisite little tune for piano (Jon Jang) and erhu (Jiebing Chen) plays, the pair walks, she behind him with her hand on his shoulder, until he slowly moves away, leaving her forlorn. She is prevented from following by an upturned metal cot that throughout the evening functions as a metaphor for the barrier the detainees faced. The chain-link frame looks like prison bars, and the space between the links provides a ray of hope. At the end of the performance it becomes a door to freedom a family walks through.

Frances Sedayao performs the evening's best solo, "Like Bullets," to a collage score by Ryan Drury. As Sedayo sits under a familiar hanging lightbulb, she faces a volley of rapid-fire questions from an unseen captor – it probably isn't far from what these immigrants, whose only "crime" was that they were Chinese and poor, actually experienced.