Dance : Hubbard Street at Royce Hall

To do justice to Twyla Tharp’s off-balance, seemingly casual moves, dancers need a unique combination of drop-dead technique, ensemble ease, wit and personality. The Chicago-based Hubbard Street Dance Company, seen Friday night at UCLA’s Royce Hall, met the challenge more than halfway but lacked the consummate suavity of Tharp’s own dancers.

The two Tharp works on the program--along with Daniel Ezralow’s nasty new “Read My Hips”--are part of a project designed to preserve her choreography.

“Sue’s Leg,” a 1975 piece for four dancers set to eight vintage Fats Waller recordings, combines fragments of sports and dance activities--turning, sliding, balancing, shadow-boxing--that stop and start with insouciant ease. Stumbling dancers weaving in and out of place will suddenly finish up a bar of music with a beaming ensemble bow.

“Baker’s Dozen” (1979, to ‘30s music by Willie (The Lion) Smith) is even more of an ensemble piece, with six couples sashaying across the stage, clowning around the wings and tossing in campy bits reminiscent of ice skating routines.

In both works, Krista Swenson--formerly in Tharp’s company--was most at home with the sagging, twisting, jabbing by-play. Portions of her body casually moved independently of each other, and she could shift instantly from self-conscious vamping to throwaway movement doodles.

Claire Bataille--seen last week in Irvine--improved mightily this time around, with a new sense of knockabout ease. In “Sue’s Leg,” Geoff Myers, substituting for Ron de Jesus, hadn’t yet hooked into the stylish fun of his shambling role. Similarly, Alberto J. Arias, substituting for Josef Patrick, didn’t muster the requisite level of comic timing and rambunctious bliss.

Beset by illness and injury, the company gamely pounded its way through Ezralow’s new trash-dance. It’s a cruel, strobe-lit zone of wrestlers, fascistic group movement (grinding pelvises, dance-till-you-drop frenzy) and ritual worship of a pair of bodies beautiful--all to a blasting score by Michel Colombier. Arresting moments that play on audience reaction early in the piece give way to simple-minded techno-pop assault in the name of social commentary. William Forsythe does this sort of thing with much more finesse.