FOUR PIECES FEATURED : PBS’ ‘OFF CENTER’ FOCUS ON POST-MODERN DANCE

Two largely ruinous TV adaptations of post-modern theater choreography plus two pieces more notable for video effects than dance content share an episode of the series “Alive From Off Center” tonight on PBS (10 p.m. on Channels 28 and 50; 11 p.m. on Channel 24).

Familiar to local audiences, Charles Moulton’s “Nine Person Precision Ball Passing” and Trisha Brown’s “Accumulation With Talking Plus Water Motor” both redefine dance virtuosity through variations on minimalist processes.

However, directors Skip Blumberg (for Moulton) and Jonathan Demme (for Brown) don’t seem to understand how these stage works hold attention. Instead of drawing viewers into the processes, they supply diversionary camerawork and/or editing tricks that fragment the movement structures and inevitably destroy their impact.

Blumberg’s “Towards a Minimal Choreography” at the end of the program defines the limits of the “Alive” directors’ positive achievement (modest by experimental video standards): using editing techniques to disassemble movement and construct new out- of-time sequencing patterns.

In Roberto Romano’s “Caught,” we first see a collage of contrasting movement phrases performed in an urban ruin by dancer/choreographer David Parsons. Then, as Parsons settles into steadier motion, Romano introduces strobe-lit images of Parsons separated by blackouts, creating gaps in the movement flow for the viewer to intuit along with actions manipulated in the editing process beyond kinetic or temporal possibility.

In theory, this interplay of choreographic and filmic discontinuities ought to be stimulating. But Parson’s presence as a dancer is by far the most compelling thing about “Caught,” so giving us ever-shorter glimpses of him represents a self-defeating notion indeed.