Youth Well-Served at Invitational

Pitches for donations, awards for teaching and lifetime achievement, applause for every celebrity in the audience: The annual Los Angeles Dance Invitational had more than dancing on its agenda Saturday at the Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood.

Not merely a benefit for Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services, the event often seemed a three-hour commercial for that charity, reselling GLASS to an appreciative audience that walked in the door already sold.

If commercial dance had monopolized the Invitational in its earliest editions, this new (fourth) incarnation displayed a broader range of styles and a growing appetite for creative risk. And because GLASS benefits young people, the presence of many talented, energetic and well-coached teenage dancers proved appropriate as well as entertaining.

Winners of the 2002 Music Center Spotlight Awards highlighted this emphasis on youth--long-limbed Diane N. Booth in a variation from the ballet “Le Corsaire” and charismatic Timo Nunez-Bellamy in a mercurial flamenco solo.

Unfortunately, an untitled five-choreographer medley by the youth group Funkanometry played like a promo reel, with the incessant changes in dance attack and music leading nowhere. The same tendency weakened Ian Catindig’s promising “What Lurks at Night,” ensemble hip-hop with a horror-film edge. And it nearly toppled Raymond G. del Barrio’s impossibly overcrowded “Oh Cassini” (music by Prince), a tribute to Joe Cassini, winner of the Stanley Holden Award for Distinguished Teaching.

“Hittin’ It,” a tap septet for the 12- to 16-year-old members of the Jazz Tap Ensemble’s Caravan Project, nearly fell prey to the same blur of steps and poses that dance medleys invite, but the solo for prodigy Joseph Wiggan anchored the piece in sharply etched expertise. Becky Twitchell and Channing Cook Holmes choreographed, with tap virtuoso Holmes supplying the drum accompaniment but not dancing.

Dramatic isolation linked three new narrative pieces. In Carol Guidry’s wistful duet “So Am I” (music by Gershwin), a woman drifted in and out of a quasi-romantic partnership.

In Mandy Moore’s atmospheric “No Earthly Ships” (music uncredited), a woman awaiting the return of her lover interacted with an inventively swirling women’s corps.

And in Vickie Mendoza’s quirky, enigmatic theater piece “Je Ne Suis Pas ‘Pathetique’ ” (music by Beethoven), a nurse with sylphide wings dressed, aided and became swept up in the movement of a withdrawn woman determined to dance.

Familiar pleasures completed the evening, including Rei Aoo’s fluent ballet-jazz quintet “The Horsemen in Wilderness,” Stephanie Gilliland’s powerhouse modern dance septet “Big Manuel” and Ballet Folklorico del Pacifico’s splashy, large-scale “Fiesta en Jalisco,” credited to Adriana Astorga-Gainey.

Lisa K. Lock’s contortions on pointe in her “Winged” solo again looked splendid and her black body veil made her seem encased in mist.

Kim Borgaro (replacing the announced Jamal Story) brought technical security and fervor to “Endangered Species,” Robert Gilliam’s glamorous remake of “The Dying Swan.”

In the nondance portions of the program, Broadway star Chita Rivera exuded graciousness when accepting her lifetime achievement award, executive producer Howard Ibach spoke of GLASS’ mission in moving personal terms and host Debbie Allen revealed the ability to sustain a celebratory spirit by sheer force of will. The awards presenters included Marty Krofft and Dee Dee Wood.