CUNNINGHAM DANCERS IN ‘FABRICATIONS’

Merce Cunningham’s “Fabrications” teems with brilliantly realized movement paradox: the passage of extremely slow-motion extensions executed against a radically speeded-up music tape, for example, or the group sequences that achieve a focused cohesion and inevitability even though dancers keep arriving and leaving, seemingly at random.

But this new full-company vehicle--introduced locally on Sunday in Royce Hall, UCLA--may be most remarkable for the big chill that sets in midway through, the transition from quasi-narrative statements of conviviality to the final ensemble in which the dancers seem so insular they could be dancing 15 simultaneous solos.

The Dove Bradshaw backdrop to “Fabrications” abstracts a dissected human heart. Perhaps coincidentally, the choreography also examines human feelings clinically, from a woman’s sudden outburst of spasms in an early duet to the complete shutdown of emotion at the end. Emmanuel de Melo Pimenta’s score--layered radio static and faint snatches of tunes--and the summery street clothes complete the sense of an everyday world turned laboratory specimen.

The company dances “Fabrications” and the familiar, lyrical “Pictures” with a no-nonsense assurance plus limitless reserves of energy and control. Cunningham himself appears in both, with his semaphoric solo in the former representing the last gasp of eccentric individuality before the hard-driving coldness engulfs everyone.

“Arcade,” to one of John Cage’s piano explorations, doesn’t fit the Cunningham dancers quite so comfortably. For once, they take the stage with a sense of duty, not manifest destiny, and here you can see the effort and even strain that remains invisible elsewhere.

Choreographed for the Pennsylvania Ballet, “Arcade” isolates through overemphasis certain aspects of classical technique, offering awesomely long-held extensions in attitude , spectacular innovations in the supported adagio (especially for the cavalier), and a reconsideration of divertissement structure itself. It is rich, brainy but also a little remote.

Bradshaw’s setting--a gray gallery with a sloping pillar on display--invites us to look at the dancing as just another cultural artifact. Is this Cunningham’s attitude toward ballet? If so, his choreography expresses it perfectly.