Confusion in Three Acts

Donald Byrd’s best works combine a sophisticated sense of dance structure with a talent for sardonic social commentary--qualities abundant in many of his short pieces and dance-theater projects but only fitfully evident in a string of recent jazz extravaganzas that have looked more like marketing ploys than creative statements.

Introduced locally at El Camino College on Saturday, the three-part “In a Different Light: Duke Ellington” even gives presenters a choice of opening sections: “The Shack,” with the dancers--male and female--all wearing enormous fake breasts and phalluses, versus “Not the Shack,” which features a tamer but still wicked parody of the head-wagging, finger-splaying, corn-pone cliches that Broadway, nightclub and Hollywood choreographers once used to depict black America.

California Plaza risked “The Shack” (by itself) last summer. El Camino opted for “Not the Shack” on Saturday. But neither of these sections really belongs with the rest of “In a Different Light”: two plotless acts of tepid jazz-modern choreography that displays no real affinity for its 40-year sampling of music by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

When he’s idea-driven, Byrd uses music adroitly--as in the knowing show-dance lampoons of his familiar “Harlem Nutcracker” (to more Ellington-Strayhorn) or the imaginatively fractured folklore of “Alleged Dances” (to John Adams), seen at USC on Wednesday.

But when no dramatic or satiric purpose inspires him, Byrd grows defiantly unmusical, imposing arbitrary and often strangely scattered choreographic notions on his accompaniments, almost as if he never really listened to them.

In Act 2 of “In a Different Light,” for example, you hear slow, soft piano filigree while Thaddeus Davis yanks Alexandra Damiani through a gross, hard-sell duet: high kick, fish dive, overhead lift, upside-down hold, the works.

*

Indeed, much of this act (titled “A Gentle Prelude”) proves hopelessly overwrought, from the portentous and ultimately meaningless sense of trepidation coloring the beginning and end (borrowed from Balanchine’s “La Valse,” with the hands-across-the-eyes gesture a quote from “Serenade”), to all the strained ballet rhetoric that only Jamal Story can seamlessly integrate with Byrd’s gymnastic and pop dance challenges.

Act 3 (“In a Different Light”) relies on loose, playful gambits danced straight at the audience, show-dance style, and the eight-member company looks just fine. But, again, nothing here matches the pieces on the unassuming three-part USC program (“Little Byrds”) for choreographic originality. And nothing here connects with the music as incisively as the Ellingtonia choreographed by Alvin Ailey and Garth Fagan--or even by such lesser lights as Michael Smuin and David Bintley.

*

If Byrd put together “The Shack,” “Not the Shack” and “Alleged Dances” (retitled “Supershack,” perhaps), he’d have a program of provocative, accessible and--most crucially--inimitable work dissing everything from choreographic stereotypes to society’s obsession with body parts.

But, of course, that program wouldn’t be an all-anything, high-concept event--just dance, “only” dance, and not marketable as something more. Not worth the commissioning moola of seven national presenters, right?

So expect more of the same. Byrd may not know much about jazz choreography, but he knows the icy American dance landscape. And the most memorable thing about “In a Different Light” may be how clearly you can see that landscape behind all the superficial gaiety and technical flash onstage.

Besides the dancers previously mentioned, the Byrd company includes Olivia Bowman, Theresa Da Silva, Daniel Cardoso, Rachael Venner and Michael Thomas (replacing the listed Devin Pullins).