AT WADSWORTH ON FRIDAY : A LIMIT ON SPIRIT FROM POSIN DANCE

If the dance component of the recent Los Angeles Festival offered a surfeit of hollow choreography, it did showcase an abundance of fine dancing and thus put to rest the canard that contemporary work is strong on concept but weak on execution.

No such trade-off occurred in the performances of La La La Human Steps, Urban Bush Women, Monnier-Duroure and Muteki-sha. Indeed, the remarkable expertise and commitment of these companies not only maximized the impact of their often-problematic material but set a new standard for local modern-dance endeavor. New and potentially troublesome.

Before the festival, for example, a consistently half-hearted and slovenly performance like the one given by the Kathryn Posin Dance Company in the Wadsworth Theater on Friday might have seemed merely business-as-usual for the wan UCLA “Art of Dance” series.

Now, however, that our expectations have been heightened, our sense of what is possible confirmed, dancing this gutless and lazy represents a scandalous affront. Posin deserves more, and so do we.

Set to Philip Glass’ score for the film “Koyaanisqatsi,” Posin’s ritualistic “From the Hopi” developed intriguing formal patterns out of serpentine paths, sculptural friezes and, especially, from shared weight. Moreover, along with inventive reflections of Glass’ structural permutations, she introduced potent emotional statements about suffering and isolation.

As always, she made formidable demands upon her dancers by exploiting everything from balletic balances-in-extension to deep articulations of the lower back--plus extremes of feeling.

Her six-member company failed nearly every test. Beyond the inexcusable unisons, it seemed as if nobody really wanted to put out: to fully stretch, to stay in tune with one another, to invest the movement with any urgency.

In Posin’s “Forgotten Signals,” to music by Laurie Spiegel, the dancing proved a good deal tidier but remained just as vacant and slack, coming fully alive only when the company members performed individual signature steps: showpiece fodder. A pity, since Posin’s contrasts between passages of flowing dance-abstraction and sequences of tautly focused dramatic gesture added up to a compelling exploration of content in dance: expressive movement as the subject of choreographic analysis.

Alas, Posin’s organizational savvy--her ability to sharply define her purposes and resourcefully develop her themes--collapsed in the brand-new “Hurts Too Much to Stop.” Here she appeared as narrator, with the piece emerging as a rambling journal of her preoccupations: from bicoastalism to safe sex.

Unfortunately, the dances didn’t express her ideas as much as decorate her commentary. At best, they seemed rather like clever doodles in the margin of a diary; at worst, they betrayed the same lack of integrity that Posin’s dancers conveyed with every step.

In the late ‘80s, what does it accomplish to turn crack and the homeless into movement riffs? Do we really need more jokes about Hollywood eccentricity or more confessions of why dancers dance?

For the record, Posin’s dancers told us that when they dance they understand who they really are. Which is more than anyone could guess from watching them all evening.