NEW, REWORKED PIECES : CHOREOGRAPHER D’WARF, AT LACE

Sexual attraction proved an irresistible and deadly force in a sequence of new and reworked short pieces by choreographer d’Warf presented Tuesday at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.

Encounters between the sexes led to rape, murder or even mutilation--from the macabre, cartoonish “Hive,” which combined the myth of the female spider devouring the male after mating, and the drone’s fascination with the Queen Bee; to the dance drama “Nothing Suite,” which depicted a callous male literally stepping over the body of his wife--lover?--to party with three other women.

Reinforcing this horror were works dramatizing madness, narcissism or sadistic domination (“The Waiting Room,” “Surgery,” “Rattleosophy,” “The Work”).

Set against such themes, such lyric balances, extensions, floating turns or seabird-like hovering postures as closed “Nothing Suite” seemed mere wishful thinking and dramatically unconnected to the rest of the work.

To be sure, when danced, mimed or acted as strongly as they were by d’Warf, a charismatic performer, Anita Pace, Jan Bryant and Anita Bartolata, the choreographer’s bleak obsessions could prove fitfully compelling. Participants in other works included Joan Callopy, Hana Lauterkranc, Rikky George, Rocky Grisez and Tomi Yagmi.

But the effect of the works often was weakened by episodes that were disproportionate in length and not related integrally to one another. The choreographer appeared stronger in creating tensely focused moments than in sculpting purposeful, finished whole works.