DANCE : He Puts a Spin on the Psyche : The tensions of modern times--and relationships--will always drive the work of choreographer John Malashock. But after changes in his troupe and his own shifting interests, his dances reflect a search for connection

John Malashock winced when asked about ambitions he may have for his 5-year-old modern dance company.

“That dirty word-- ambition ,” said the choreographer and founder of San Diego-based Malashock Dance & Company, which will perform three new works at UCLA on Friday and Saturday.

What’s so bad about ambition?

“There’s a difference between ambition and drive,” said Malashock, a former Twyla Tharp dancer. “Drive is what forces you to do the work; it’s a necessity. Ambition has more to do with success in the outer world.”

Whether or not Malashock considers himself ambitious, his sights have always extended beyond his native San Diego. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in dance from Southern Methodist University in 1975, he landed a spot with the Utah Repertory Dance Theatre. His next stop, in 1977, was Paris, where he performed and choreographed for the Ballet Blaska for a year.

Returning to the United States, he was accepted into Tharp’s company. His five-year career with Tharp included dancing in the film “Amadeus” and in numerous television specials, as well as participating in a benefit performance with Mikhail Baryshnikov.

In 1984, married and with a young son, Malashock came home to San Diego, first to attempt to lead “a normal life,” working in--he noted reluctantly--real estate development.

“Talk about feeling like a fish out of water!” said the choreographer, whose boyishly handsome face, framed by well-cut blond curls, belies his 39 years.

For two years, Malashock didn’t perform and even avoided going to dance concerts. He eventually realized “there was something too large missing.” A hunger to create work led him back to the studio, and his experience in dancing with one of the top companies in the world led him to conceive a troupe that, he hoped, would have an audience that could extend beyond his San Diego home.

Soft-spoken but displaying the same intensity that appears in his dances, he said, “I have a strong desire to prove that a dance company can exist outside of New York and still function on the level that gives a company a broad reputation, the ability to function nationally or internationally.”

The recession, brutal financially to every arts organization, has limited Malashock’s budget--to a peak of $175,000 this year--and curtailed his ability to tour. The company performs several times a year in San Diego, where it has established a residency at the Old Globe Theatre, consisting of office space and an annual performance there. This year’s run at the Old Globe concludes today with two performances.

But the company has appeared only twice in the Los Angeles area, most recently at Cal State Long Beach in 1992, and only once in New York, also in 1992. It has also performed elsewhere in California and in Seattle.

Nevertheless, according to a number of critics, Malashock has all the right stuff to merit a national audience. Times dance writer Lewis Segal praised him as “the Southern California choreographer most in touch with the panic and isolation of contemporary life.” Dance critic Anne Marie Welsh, writing in the San Diego Union-Tribune, called Malashock’s dances “as fascinating as almost any in contemporary dance.”

Many other reviews have been equally glowing. Most have noted Malashock’s distinctive emotional power--the way he uses movement to reveal the raw psyche beneath the surface persona, in particular his seemingly hopeless, often savage depiction of struggles between women and men.

Married to his psychotherapist wife, Nina, for 14 years and the father of an 11-year-old son, Duncan, Malashock cautioned against interpreting his relationship dances too literally.

“That there’s tension, that there’s anger, that there’s conflict--to me I haven’t been dealing with a male-female thing. It’s more personal than that--it’s almost like battling with oneself.”

Not one to let criticism roll off his back, he said, “I heard at one point an accusation that my work was sexist. I puzzled over that for a long time. I asked a lot of people whether they felt that was some sort of presence in the work. I didn’t feel that was the case. Yet I would see how somebody watching might be sensitized to certain things.

“For me, where the bleakness comes in doesn’t have so much to do with male-female relationships. It’s more about relationship to oneself and to the world out there, which is not an easy place.”

That’s a relationship that is changing. Two of his four dancers left the company last year, forcing Malashock to regroup as well as to recruit new dancers. The process resulted in adding another person, so there are now three women and three men, including the choreographer. It also produced a shift, though not a profound change, in artistic direction.

“I think I’m always going to be strongly interested in the really personal, introspective type of work,” he said. “But whether that takes on the anger that maybe my earlier work did or more a kind of spirituality, I don’t know. It’s really going to depend on what’s bubbling inside me.”

In “The Near Reaches,” a new work that the company will perform at UCLA, Malashock explores the spirituality of his own Jewish heritage.

“Having not been given any real connection to a spirituality or religiousness, I almost have to find a way of reintegrating it myself,” said the choreographer, who grew up in an extremely secular family. “Creating dance work is certainly the closest I’ve come to faith of some sort. It’s strange talking about this stuff,” he added, laughing self-consciously.

Guided by Cantor Deborah Bard, he discovered a suite of Sephardic songs from 15th-Century Spain performed by Montserrat Figueras. To Figueras’ haunting soprano, “The Near Reaches” opens with a duet in which female dancer Debi Toth and male Francis Floro, both bare-chested, maintain physical contact for virtually the entire movement.

Explaining his decision to have Toth topless, Malashock said: “It has nothing to do with anything sexual--it’s sensual, it’s the feel of skin.

“There’s a sense of community in that piece for me,” he said, “and yet a sense of individualism, a kind of spirituality and sensuality that’s all wrapped up together. I think, in a way, that’s a view of how things can be. I don’t see things being as clearly defined anymore in life, where there’s a rigid separation between my spiritual life and my regular life. That’s why I say even though it’s to the Sephardic music, which speaks to me, it’s not a Jewish piece, it’s a spiritual piece.”

Malashock may be best known for his introspective, emotional pieces, but his body of work also includes two other types of dances--abstract responses to music and collaborations.

His music-based work will be represented at UCLA through “Souvenir de Florence,” which came about through a commission from the San Diego Symphony, which asked him to create a dance for its Tchaikovsky Festival.

Tchaikovsky would hardly have been Malashock’s first choice--his other music-based works have scores by Leos Janacek, Jimi Hendrix and Leonard Cohen--but, as in the Janacek piece, Malashock used Tchaikovsky’s music to both explore and challenge traditional structure.

“It would be pointless to just make a visual representation of that music. Why bother?” he said. “Plus, the music suggests a kind of vocabulary that isn’t my natural vocabulary. I had to let my own movement come out. . . . I felt like there was room for humor along with the straight romanticism, an off-balance feeling.”

The Tchaikovsky piece is the most technically demanding he has created, Malashock said. “There’s more jumping and lifting than in any other dance I’ve done before. It requires a kind of ensemble precision that is deceptively difficult.”

“Souvenir de Florence” also moves at a relentless pace. “Don’t worry if my face turns purple,” dancer Gwen Hunter Ritchie called out in a recent rehearsal. “It always does.”

(Hunter Ritchie, from Washington, D.C., is one of the company’s new members, as are New Yorker Peter G. Kalivas and San Diegan Floro. They join Toth and Maj Xander, who have been with Malashock since the troupe started.)

In the realm of collaborative work, Malashock’s efforts have had mixed results. His “Apologies from the Lower Deck,” a tragicomical combination of movement, narrative and music, has pleased both audiences and critics since its 1991 premiere. But a 1992 piece created with San Diego flamenco artist Yaelisa has garnered many less-than-enthusiastic reviews.

The choreographer continues to be drawn to collaboration, however, often with artists outside the world of dance. “Their Thought and Back Again,” also on the UCLA program, was developed with the resident composer at the La Jolla Playhouse, Michael Roth.

“It’s claiming a ground that’s not firmly in dance, not firmly in theater,” Malashock said. “It’s in song form musically, and it has a very loose sense of story.”

In addition to having two singers onstage, the piece will be accompanied by Roth on piano, a cellist and a violinist. Malashock is already planning his next collaboration, an evening-length project with UC San Diego professor-playwright Allan Havis.

Although Malashock resists attaching specific meanings to his movement vocabulary, his response was quite personal when he spoke of one characteristic gesture--a hand or arm shaking out of control, as the other hand struggles to restrain it.

“Sometimes I spend so much energy trying to keep things controlled,” Malashock said. “It’s pointless because everything is so unpredictable. I think that’s a struggle a lot of people have, not feeling comfortable enough to just let things be out of control, and yet knowing you need a certain amount of letting go or else you’re beating your head against the wall all the time.”

* John Malashock Dance & Company ends its San Diego run at 2 and 7 p.m. today at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park. Information: (619) 239-2255. The company will appear at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall. For information or to charge tickets by phone: (310) 825-2101.