Dance : Rudy Perez Ensemble in ‘Made in L.A.’

There’s a wash of mournful music in the air as Rudy Perez walks behind a line of open umbrellas that mushroom up from the floor at LACE.

Suddenly he leaps forward, flinging himself against empty space as if it were a barrier and then collapsing to the floor. Soon he winds a length of rope around his hands--compulsively stretching and twisting it, then, again, lashing out at the emptiness around him.

Perez hasn’t danced in years, but the concentrated fury and despair of this solo would be remarkable even if we saw him onstage all the time. Presented Friday as the centerpiece of his new, full-evening “Made in L.A.,” it links a meditative, communal, “exotic” opening section (the four-member Perez company dressed in saffron robes) with a dancey, convivial, “domestic” finale (the cast wearing Californian shorts and singlets).

All three sections involve responses to the environment. In Part 1, we see people carrying and wielding umbrellas. Moreover, the score by Robert Berg and David Hughes (with some crucial borrowings from the Baroque) incorporates what may be distant thunder--or something far more ominous. In Perez’s solo, the sense of environmental oppression becomes obsessive. Yet the romping sportswear crowd of the last part basks contentedly in the light, oblivious to any suggestion of threat.

Dedicated to “the men and women in the Persian Gulf,” “Made in L.A.” seems to explore the war’s impact on different sensibilities--with, as usual, the chic beach set looking hopelessly self-absorbed and out of touch. But the contrasts between groups don’t bring us closer to the sense of jittery dread that Perez embodies in the solo--and that he brilliantly expressed in the group work “Cold Sweat” five years ago.

“Made in L.A.” aims for a wider scope, to be sure, but its essential statement consists of one man enraged. The rest, however artful, is mere decoration.