Germani Finding His Voice Through Dance : Performances: The choreographer takes another leap as his expanded dance company shows off his latest steps this week at Sushi.

Al Germani was a man with a mission when he created his own modern dance company less than two years ago. After a 15-year career as a psychotherapist, the former dancer was determined to return to dance, this time as a choreographer.

The Al Germani Dance Company has four public concerts to its credit now, but Germani is still searching for a choreographic voice.

“I threw out all the choreography I did for my first couple of concerts,” Germani, 38, said in an interview last week. “The dancers are definitely getting better, but I’m still experimenting.”

The San Diego-based dance maker is hard at work on a new concert, slated for three performances at Sushi this weekend (at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday). But he talked candidly about his thorny evolution as a choreographer.

“I was in a learning stage then, now I’m getting closer to me, I’m finding my choreographic voice.”

That quest for a personal statement has taken Germani on a zigzag course through much of the contemporary modern dance lexicon. This weekend, he will move further into post-modernism with his latest work, an ensemble dance titled “Iso.”

“I’m still experimenting,” he said. “But I think I found a beginning point to start developing. I really like athletics. I like choreography that reaches out and grabs you--fast movement. I’m trying to use vocals, and using the upper body in more of a post-modern vein, with loose body movements. There’s a lot going on at once, and it’s not real codified. I’m getting away from the Cunningham/Graham style.”

Germani hopes his new look will take him closer to the Bebe Miller brand of quick-tempo post-modernism.

“There’s a lot of very fast movement and slow suspensions. It’s semi-abstract, but there’s a sense of things happening. There’s even a little martial arts in the emphasis on the upper body,” Germani said. “It’s funny. When I was dancing, my arms were always pretty bad. Now, I’m putting the emphasis on the arms and upper body.”

One of the most noticeable changes will be the expanded size of the company, and the presence of male dancers in the company’s once all-female ranks. And Germani is taking advantage of these new resources in his dance designs for this concert.

“There’s a lot of partnering in the new piece,” he said. “We have three men in the company now, and eight women. We never had more than four or five people in the whole ensemble before.”

“Iso,” Germani’s most ambitious work to date, is still a work-in-progress, Germani said. But it will feature the entire company--and it should be a clear reflection of the highly technical, post-modern direction Germani is moving toward these days.

“Yes, it will be more challenging for the dancers,” Germani said. “But that’s part of what I’m trying to do. It will be challenging me to grow, and it will also be challenging for the dancers.

“The music for ‘Iso’ is 45 minutes long,” he said. “But we’ll only do the first nine minutes this time. We’re also premiering ‘Hedging,’ ” a dance drama Germani showed as a work-in-progress at his last concert.

Unlike Germani’s earlier offerings, these new additions will be only “semi-thematic,” the choreographer said. “They’re not very literal. At any given moment, two or three people may be interacting. But I’m not happy with all angst.

“I’m still not very good at getting a whole piece to hold together. But you have to keep working. That’s the only way to get better at choreography. I’m trying to crank out two full pieces--50% new work” for each concert, he said.

So far, Germani’s performances have all been local. But with a successful fund-raising campaign under his belt, and the promise of grants in the air, he’s ready to expand his horizons.

“Things are starting to happen,” Germani said. “Next year, we’ll begin touring in San Francisco and Los Angeles,” he said. “We’ll perform in little places,” on a scale with Sushi, he said. “We’ll have two or three 30-minute pieces. It’s exciting, but we’re all scared.”