DANCE REVIEW : Hubbard Street Dance Company in El Camino Performance

An athletic group with a musical theater-based style, Hubbard Street Dance Company turned in an energetic performance Friday in El Camino College’s Marsee Auditorium. But the dancers tended to give brisk, impersonal attention to movement rather than explore its shape and dynamics--a strategy that may be a lifesaver in a chorus line but looks hollow in a concert, particularly in adagio work.

Part of the problem may have been the program, half of which was created by super-slick Margo Sappington. In her new piece, “And Now This,” glued to the beat of a Bernstein medley, she had the dancers rushing around brightly with out-thrust arms, engineering cumbersome acrobatics or spitting out rote sequences of turns, kicks and hip isolations.

Sappington’s familiar “Cobras in the Moonlight” obviously banked on the appeal of “Tango Argentino” yet returned to the old swooning cliches. “Step Out of Love” owed its combination of laconic gesture and sudden “knockout” body crumbles to Twyla Tharp and William Forsythe. But in Sappington’s hands, rationale and development disappeared.

David Parsons’ “The Envelope” involved black-garbed dancers in sunglasses cavorting and posturing to Rossini. In “Rose from the Blues,” Jeffrey Jackson attempted to pump up a trio of pop oldies into dance vignettes. The best came last: artistic director Lou Conte’s “The ‘40s,” with Kitty Skillman Hilsabeck scrunching herself up into goofy positions and a pack of smartly cane-wielding, hat-tipping, high-stepping dancers in close pursuit.