DANCE REVIEW : Technically Strong, Emotionally Weak : For all the action and challenges of the choreography, David Parsons’ ‘Bachiana’ neglected the values of the music and the troupe.

Buoyed by blithe technique but often weighed down by facile choreography, the Parsons Dance Company opened the second annual Feet First Contemporary Dance Series at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Tuesday.

The five works on the program--all but one choreographed by David Parsons--ranged from his 1992 signature solo, “Caught,” to a recent group piece, “Bachiana,” that looked so indebted to Paul Taylor that Parsons possibly ought to be paying him royalties. From 1978 until 1987, Parsons, 34, was one of the great Taylor dancers.

“Bachiana,” set to Bach’s Third Suite for Orchestra, assembled the eight members of the troupe in symmetrical groupings, made use of Taylor-made springy, airy jumps and distorted balletic vocabulary.

But for all its busyness and technical challenge, the 1993 piece failed to illuminate any emotional values in the music or among the dancers--Parsons, Gail Gilbert, Patricia Kenny, Elizabeth Koeppen, Victoria Lundell, Matthew Rodarte, Jaime Martinez and Christopher Kirby.

Parsons and Lundell’s duet (to the popularly called Air on the G String), for instance, relied on support and exchange of weight without providing any meaning beyond the technique.

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After the program had been printed, Parsons apparently decided to turn over “Caught” to the strikingly long-limbed and powerful Kirby. The choreographer was not injured; he dances less these days and often gives the work to one of his dancers, according to a theater spokesperson.

As usual, the strobe-lighting effects in the piece worked the magical illusion of making the soloist seem to hover in the air in defiance of gravity, to the evident joy of the large audience. Despite his technical clarity and force, however, Kirby did not probe any conflict or triumph in the images of containment and escape provided by the spot lighting.

Completing the Irvine program were “The Envelope,” a familiar, witty send-up of modern dance and 19th-Century operatic conventions; the virtuosic but shallow “Nascimento,” and a fitfully interesting “Improvisation” by Parsons, Rodarte, Kenny and Lundell.

Co-sponsored by the enterprising Irvine theater and UC Irvine Cultural Events, the “Feet First” series will continue with the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company Feb. 12 and 13.