Pushed to the limits in ‘Atmosphere’

Using a showpiece jazz-dance vocabulary to express a profound spiritual odyssey pushed dancer-choreographer Terry Beeman to the limits of his considerable creative resources in “Atmosphere” at the El Portal Theatre on Saturday.

However, the best sequences in this eight-part, 75-minute, abstract dance drama established Beeman as an artist of the highest potential. Working with a dedicated, 16-member company, he generated impressive heat and depth in a story about the search for fulfillment in the threatening contemporary world.

A scene showing three men writhing on skeins of fabric high above the stage while three women strained at the cords pulling them back into the wings brilliantly physicalized the worldly attachments that entangle people. And the rituals that opened and closed the piece found Beeman attempting to reinvent in a new form the principles of choric dance pioneered by Mary Wigman and other innovators of early modernism.

Beeman’s challenging dance style prioritized long-held balances in extension and, especially, an extra kick, shoulder twitch or body pulse at exactly the point when his dancers reached maximum stretch. His own authority in this style remained unchallenged on Saturday, but Blake McGrath added a distinctively passionate attack as Beeman’s partner on the journey.

Also particularly effective: Tammy To as the survivor of a scene of fearful desperation and Kelley Parker as one of the women who periodically comforted and assumed the burdens of the most tortured souls in the piece.

It would be easy to mock some of the lapses and excesses of “Atmosphere”: the men’s wax jobs, the women’s glamour makeup, the occasional in-your-face rock overkill. But Beeman is the real thing: an exciting choreographer, an effective company leader and a charismatic dancer who can, in pantomime, offer you his heart -- and make you believe it.