Craft, Not Much Imagination, From Shapiro and Smith

A number of locally based modern dance companies explore the same subjects and vocabularies as Shapiro and Smith Dance--usually at a higher level of inspiration. So it seemed curious to find this unexceptional, seven-member East Coast ensemble imported for a Cal State Summer Arts program at the Carpenter Center in Long Beach on Thursday. Curious and ultimately pointless.

Danial Shapiro and Joanie Smith have been collaborating for about a decade now and their seven pieces all proved well crafted and nicely executed. But neither performances nor choreographies ever reached an imaginative flash point--not when Shapiro and Smith were hellbent on getting in touch with the children inside and certainly not when Big Themes were on the table.

Weakened by David Greenspan’s self-consciously literary texts, the solo “Wee Violence” looked at murderous fantasies, memories and urges within a family while the septet “What Dark/Falling Into Light” tried to depict feelings of intimidation and inadequacy aroused when thinking/writing/dancing about the Holocaust.

In each case, the choreography doggedly repeated motifs that were never notably distinctive to begin with. As much as these pieces deserved points for creative ambition, they never offered enough original imagery, new movement or performance power to make them authentic statements. Instead they seemed generic wannabes.

“Family” deepened the sense of secondhand expression, neatly recycling satiric depictions of dysfunctional relationships found in everything from Paul Taylor’s “Big Bertha” through the Who’s “Tommy” and beyond.

Happily, thematic pretension yielded to playful diversion in “Dance With Two Army Blankets,” “Two” and “Dance, Dance,” all of which used bouncy a cappella recordings by the Toby Twining quartet. “Army Blankets” had the only sustained flow of the evening as the five dancers ran about in brightly colored suits scooping one another up in free-form fabric loops and hammocks.

Dancing together with warmth and skill, Shapiro and Smith infused “Two” with a mature intimacy. Alas, Chalie Livingston and Daniel Weltner were stuck with oversweetened kid’s stuff in “Dance, Dance” but sold it energetically.

No less cutesy-poo, “Cafe” took its style from sitcom farce, with Shapiro and Smith frantically gesticulating at each other over a restaurant table while barely stifling their lust. Empty of dance interest, it appeared yet another example of S&S; substituting versatility for a coherent artistic vision.