A Troupe’s Solid but Very Basic Instincts

In the latest attempt to give commercial dancers a showcase on local stages, Liz Imperio’s Instincts Live Media Dance Company made its debut over the weekend at the L.A. Theatre Center in a program most notable for Imperio’s slick stagecraft and the dancers’ technical expertise.

The director and choreographer of Gloria Estefan’s last two tours, Imperio recycled every show business cliche imaginable in her dance drama “Labyrinth of Souls” and her TV-inspired divertissement “Couch Potato Syndrome,” appropriating pop dance forms belonging to the black and Latin communities with no sense of context or even care, and buying into objectionable stereotypes of women and gay men as well.

The pleasure in the Saturday performance thus came from the energy and skill of the 24 dancers on view, not the mindless and shopworn routines assigned them. Wade Robson generated tremendous excitement with his robotic “Sci-Fi Channel” solo, Corey Burrell and Michelle Ming brought impressive intensity to the stale balleticisms of their “Water” duet (choreographed by Cate Caplin and Murray Phillips), and Alejandro Estornel exuded star quality as the abused drug addict in “Labyrinth of Souls.”

But even here, major problems arose. “Labyrinth” leads Estornel, Burrell, Ming and their colleagues projected character and emotion superbly when dancing--but their spoken passages sounded amateurish in tone, timing or scale. Besides signing up for remedial acting lessons, this company should study Charlotte d’Amboise’s performance in “Chicago” to understand how a colloquial role can be defined in speech, dance and song with no seams or forcing.

Strangely tense and tentative in the flamenco-flavored “Fire” ensemble choreographed by Roberto Amaral, the dancers looked utterly at home on standard commercial-dance turf, tirelessly punching out steps with the spirit and precision one would expect from honed professionals and making Imperio’s reliance on smoke, strobes, trapeze hoists and bleary video images decidedly unnecessary. At best, Instincts offered a recap of the dancers’ talents--but where’s the true creative outlet they deserve?