Music, Dance Reviews : DuPeron’s The It Squad Sways at Cal State L.A.

Lori DuPeron is just mad about swings, trapezes, conveyances that hang free from the rafters and sway back and forth.

Whether her company, The It Squad, is purveying a starkly defiant MTV sort of piece like “Crash Test Dummies” or its second half, “and other love songs,” as it did Thursday at Cal State L.A., this affinity of hers comes into play.

What finally became absorbing in “Crash Test Dummies” was the sight of DuPeron draped inside a huge aluminum frame suspended in space. As the thing swung, with greater and greater momentum, she moved against the force with rapturous sensuality, creating a push-pull effect.

Otherwise DuPeron’s movement scheme in “Dummies” relied on frenetic corps maneuvers--constant rolling, jumping, jittering, skittering by blank-faced dancers outfitted in workmen’s jumpsuits--with herself as a central comet of energy.

For the most part DuPeron deals in effects without plumbing substance, very much as a product of MTV mentality might. Among her arsenal is sonic chaos (new age rock, babbling voices), Brechtian alienation (an open stage with red Exit door in view), symbols of urban holocaust.

She seems to like the look of these surfaces and uses them as a collector would, thus trivializing the associations and suggesting a certain sophomoric level of awareness.

Even “and other love songs”--which featured an unidentified but mesmerizing trapeze artist whose George Petty calendar girl poses stirred the greatest interest--ran out of ideas after its brightly whimsical Europop beginnings, only to return to the superficially grim trappings of “Dummies.”