Dance : A Lush Sampling of Lubovitch

Master of the lubed move, Lar Lubovitch has built a modern dance career on lush, liquid virtuosity. Sampled in two programs at the Wadsworth Theater on Friday and Saturday, the flowing sculptural richness of his style often became an end in itself, with “Concerto Six Twenty-Two” perhaps the best example.

Performed Saturday, this 1986 ensemble showpiece to Mozart’s clarinet composition of the same Kochel number assimilated the innovations in a whole Paul Taylor sub-genre--but coated them in honey and then in powdered sugar. You want jaunty, Tayloresque mock-jogging plus creamy, swoop-and-swirl Lub-o-vision? Seek no further.

Halfway through “622,” there occurs the celebrated male duet that Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project included in its first Southland performances in 1991. Mercurial, intimate and gymnastically inventive, it made a genuine emotional statement that the work’s cutesy-poo finale immediately retracted. At least Jeffrey Hankinson and Lane Sayles danced with lyric sensitivity.

In its world premiere on Friday, the suite “So in Love” attempted a shift in Lubovitch attack. Here he extrapolated from distinctive vocalism heard on four contemporary recordings of Cole Porter songs. Thus Rebecca Rigert was sent onstage to sprawl, spit, roll imaginary dice, shake her breasts and give everyone The Finger as a gloss on Tom Waits’ gritty interpretation of “It’s All Right With Me.”

Lushness, however, immediately reclaimed the stage in a candied duet for Susan Shields and Sayles (to the Neville Brothers) full of generalized ice-dancing rapture. And, beyond their initial, pantomime psychodrama, Kelly Slough and Scott Rink also became swept up in swoony lifts during their duet to Annie Lennox.

At the end, the long-limbed, spectacularly limber Mia Babalis indulged in glamorous self-stroking and hair-lashing to k.d. lang. Yes, the parodistic narcissism of the dancing did match the heavy-breathing excess of the accompaniment. Mission accomplished. But as the finale to the sole new work on the company’s 25th anniversary tour, the solo and the piece provided only the smallest pretext for celebration.

Four other works on the weekend programs had been recently reviewed here.