PERFORMANCE ART : Hennessy’s 3-Part ‘Saliva’ at Highways

San Francisco performance artist Keith Hennessy introduced his fitfully intelligible “Saliva” Thursday at Highways in Santa Monica.

The sprawling, three-part work fixates on a young man’s struggle to determine his personal, sexual, political and social identity. Problems and difficulties were generalized to parents and society at large.

The man’s solution of rooting identity in gender, and specifically in the ebb and flow of sexual energy, however, appeared youthfully naive and narcissistic. At the same time, his effort to mythologize and politicize the self frequently proved grandiose, hermetic and surprisingly remote and impersonal.

Hennessy structured the first two acts (“Dad” and “Mom”) in terms of a series of “lectures” and “lessons,” imposing an increasingly annoying didactic, if at times amusing, relationship to the audience.

The third act (“Keith”) was performed outdoors by a naked Hennessy intoning an obscure poem, then donning an athletic belt and jacket to manipulate two burning sticks. After singing “Amazing Grace,” in which members of the audience joined, Hennessy walked away from the group, presumably down that long, lonesome road.

Redeeming aspects of the performance included Hennessy’s humor and ironic social commentary, his inducing the audience to participate and, especially, his quality of movement and vocal delivery.

Hennessy moved with tight, sharp, impelled, sometimes spastically explosive martial arts gestures, all of which invariably proved arresting. Sometimes these gestures interrupted his texts; sometimes they made disassociated commentary on them. He gave a virtuosic movement display while hanging from straps suspended from a rafter.

The artist could modulate his voice in an appealing, almost sing-song vulnerability. Probably the highlight of the work was the section in which he pretended to lose control of his voice, which soared into falsetto. Suddenly the lordly lecturer and social critic became merely an adolescent, pained and mystified by the body’s own mysterious transformations.

Hennessy was assisted by musician Jules Beckman. “Saliva” continues through Sunday.