Dance and Music Reviews : Dance/L.A. at the L.A. Photographic Center

For a time, in the mid-’70s, Dance/L.A. seemed to define new creative horizons for the entire local dance community. Like the Company Theater earlier, its connection to the boldest, deepest experimental trends was so powerful that the usual constraints of negligible funding, inadequate venues and performers of widely varying skill seemed not to matter.

Gone are the days.

At the L.A. Photographic Center on Saturday, Dance/L.A. unveiled one hothouse etude after another: decorative pieces with no palpable sense of the here-and-now, no personal revelations, no innovations in form--and not much good dancing, either.

Manipulated, lobotomized women stripped to underwear turned up in Janet Caroll’s disjointed but intriguing duet “Frida” (a collection of images and undeveloped connective movement drawn from paintings by Frida Kahlo) and also in David Leahy’s insufferable neo-Expressionist extravaganza “Lapse of Memory” (with Lori Duperon violently, pointlessly lashing about to Wagner’s “Liebestod”).

Betrayed by weak execution, two formal group divertissements misfired. Janet Welsh’s “It’s Not My Opinion” rode the crests of Robert Lopez’s rhythmic cycle of speech and tape effects but ignored the score’s shifting densities and slippery structure. Anita Pace’s “Low Profile” boasted the partnering prowess of ballet-trained Jeffrey Gysin, but otherwise merchandised shoddy, show-dance aerobics.

Major compensation: the strange contortions and stranger cries of Betty Nash and Will Salmon in Nash’s “The Awakening I,” which depicted the mythic confrontation between snake and eagle in Aztec mythology with a ravenous, grotesque energy.