DANCE REVIEW : L.A. CHAMBER BALLET AT EL CAMINO

L.A. Chamber Ballet refuses to play it safe. Saturday at El Camino College, this fearless five-year-old company again took the kind of major repertory and casting risks that have led to both acclaim and misfortune in the past.

Trina Nahm-Mijo’s new “Wheels (2)” attempted to integrate disabled performers in wheelchairs with ballet dancers--an ambitious premise largely squandered despite the cast’s skillful execution.

Ignoring the obvious upper-body strength of many of her wheelchair performers, Nahm-Mijo emphasized chair locomotion. Thus, even when wheeling in lines or loops, Riua Akinshegun, Italia Dito, Rhonda Guller, John McDermott, Ellen Stohl and Eric Walls remained passive figures: platforms or barres for dancers’ extensions.

Except in a powerful, extended duet for Dito and dancer Victoria Koenig, “Wheels (2)” quickly abandoned most of its movement ideas in favor of artsy, sentimental imagery. It oozed civic virtue but also ended up reinforcing the worst cliches about the handicapped.

Previously performed locally by San Diego Ballet, Patrick Frantz’s 1975 “Firebird” used the suite from Stravinsky’s ballet score to accompany a moody, Native American-inspired ritual of rebirth. Unfortunately, Frantz required a series of grueling lifts utterly unsuited to his L.A. Chamber Ballet principals.

The muscular but far from Ramboesque Rocker Verastique heaved manfully (though his knees more than once nearly buckled under him), and the dauntingly statuesque Lesli Wiesner endured stoically (this company is fearless, remember?), but much of the choreography disintegrated in the dancers’ struggles to survive it.

Stanley Holden’s familiar “Lyric Suite” completed the program, with Koenig displaying great purity of line--but not the sense of surrender-to-the-movement that had made her predecessor’s performance in the role so remarkable.

In subsidiary assignments, Laurence Blake (“Lyric Suite”) made a faultless dream-cavalier; Daryl Bjoza (“Firebird”) confirmed the notable promise he showed recently in the Long Beach Ballet “Midsummer Night’s Dream”; Kristine Soleri (all three ballets) danced with exceptional refinement. Taped music accompanied every work.