Trials and Strebulations : Dance review: Choreographer Elizabeth Streb makes relentless demands on herself, her dancing ensemble and the audience at the reopening of Temporary Contemporary.

I don’t know how Elizabeth Streb and her dauntless, dancerly company of hurtling-pounding- tumbling-thumping-crunching acrobats feel this morning.

But I know how I feel. Tired. Achy. Cranky. Awed. Battered. Worried.

It’s an old-fashioned sympathy thing.

Streb, as every self-respecting with-it avant-gardist well knows, is the visionary responsible for something called “ACTION OCCUPATION,” which reopened the Temporary Contemporary museum in Little Tokyo Wednesday night.

She is the leader of a nine-person ensemble called Streb/Ringside, which tries earnestly, valiantly, sometimes exquisitely and sometimes clumsily, to turn circus exercises into art and masochism into science. Masochism, it should be noted right here, has never been this observer’s favorite diversion.

Although Streb is a choreographer, her products don’t pretend to be dances in any traditional sense. She calls them “pop action works” at one juncture, “the design of movement machines” at another. The machines, of course, are the hard-working patently mortal dancers.

Perhaps it’s time to expand our post-modern lexicon again.

This is the scene. The spacious warehouse--or is it an empty hangar?--houses a maze of structural installations: mercifully padded platforms, clusters of towers, beams and boards, a 10-foot trampoline surrounded by complex scaffolding. Significantly, no doubt, Streb labels the tramp a “surface exploder.” The dominant colors are primary: blue, red and yellow.

The program--call it a map--describes the performance as “a standing event.” That means the audience strolls from spot to spot, following the stretch-unitarded protagonists from act to act. (The costumes are credited to Eileen Thomas.)

Although the management provides limited balcony seating for “visitors with special needs,” most viewers must scramble to get a good look at the brave contortionists as they methodically slam their bodies onto the available surfaces. The gawkers also must scramble, once in a while, to avoid being struck by falling figures. It’s all in a night’s adventure.

The action pops to the rhythmic accompaniment of an “interactive audio” system devised by Matthew Ostrowski. The wildly amplified snaps, crackles and clonks turn every landing into a seismic climax. It’s a bit unnerving, and it makes even the most innocent encounter a portent of shattering disaster.

One does have to admire Streb’s imagination. One has to be impressed by her endearing energy, not to mention her enduring strength. This woman would have no problem passing muster at the Citadel.

And that’s not all, folks. Streb has a knack for creating intricate contrapuntal patterns in unlikely spaces. Gravity be damned.

She savors the value of delicate timing. She adores the high-wire tension derived from flirtation with physical calamity. She commands a fine gymnastic mind.

She manages to torture the flesh with disciplined bravura, even if her movement vocabulary is limited by her chosen environment. She takes enlightened chances with life and limb. She makes relentless demands on herself, on her selfless performers and, by extension, on her long-suffering audience.

A lot of people at the gala premiere obviously found the trying experience exhilarating. Others--this other, for instance--found that the orgy of fortissimo derring-do a pretentious source of diminishing returns.

The current collection of artsy-sporty demonstrations involves nine pieces--three new ones plus six golden-oldies (one dating way back to 1985). The assorted trials and Strebulations last less than an hour and a half, including a welcome intermission. But time goes slow when you’re having Angst .

What’s that? You want to know what actually happened on all those little stages?

OK. Not much.

The introductory vehicle turned out to be an ominous overture titled “Wall,” a flashy confrontational duet for flesh and hollow metal. (Oh, that this too, too hollow metal would melt . . .)

In “Rise,” commissioned by MOCA for this project, Adolpho Pati and Soldanela Rivera were hoisted up and down opposite sides of a vertical beam for a muscular, mirror-dance adagio.

In “UP,” which was receiving its premiere, six of the devout hurled themselves with graceful determination on and off the trusty trampoline in impeccably organized combinations and permutations.

In a new version of “Breakthru,” a 10-second escapade that will be ventured only four times during the local run, an unidentified dancer crashed head-first through a square reportedly made of plate-glass.

Also on the agenda: “Bounce,” a showpiece for eight agile agitators and a spring-loaded floor surface; “Freeflight,” a lovely production number for divers without water; “Little Ease,” a pounding-crawling solo that imprisons Streb in an open box; “Lookup!,” which finds four harnessed mountain-climbers walking in inventive suspension down the side of a wall; and “Surface,” in which seven daredevils explore some torturous ways to manipulate a couple of 6-by-8-foot planks.

According to the program blurb, Streb “stretches the definitions, the contexts and the very structure of dance.” It isn’t an easy stretch on any level.

* “ACTION OCCUPATION” continues at the Temporary Contemporary, 152 N. Central Ave., through Sept. 3, Wednesday-Sunday at 8 p.m. $18. (213) 626-6828.