Important theme, irreverent steps

We’ve all felt helpless at reports of brutality and escalating violence around the world -- reports that are the subject of “Apex,” Francesca Harper’s plotless, one-act dance drama for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Presented Wednesday on a three-part Ailey program at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the year-old work evokes the plight of abused refugees through a couple of spoken tracts and an arsenal of elaborate projection effects: words such as “Fear,” “Hate,” “Deported,” “Interrogated,” “Tortured” thrown onto a variety of surfaces, including long skeins of white fabric wound around dancers’ bodies.

However, as far as dance is concerned, nothing happens. Set to a percussive score by Rolf Ellmer, the choreography borrows whatever it needs from European dance theater, including forays into disjointed playacting and bursts of rootless virtuosity. It’s all very important in theme and faceless in dance values. Change its text and projections, and it would become something entirely different. Change the movement and who would notice besides the cast?

If “Apex” amounts to no more than a public display of concern, Ronald K. Brown’s “Grace” (1999) gets inside our feelings of helplessness with great creative sensitivity.

Beginning with a prayer solo danced by Renee Robinson that uses Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday” as an expression of spiritual pain, the piece expands to embrace 11 more individuals on the same path from isolation and doubt to a shared faith.

Along the way, as red costumes by Omatayo Wunmi Olaiya are replaced by gleaming white, Brown risks confusion by deliberately breaking all the rules of dance structure, musicality and stylistic unity. Indeed, only the work’s compelling energy flow and powerfully majestic dancing rescue it at those moments from seeming just a grab bag of simultaneous effects.

Brown’s “Serving Nia” (danced Tuesday) is stronger, paring away the hectic technical aggression sometimes evident here to achieve a purer statement. But “Grace” displays his talents and the company’s with boldness and originality.

Completing the program: Billy Wilson’s familiar “The Winter in Lisbon” (1992), a suite that has nothing to do with Portugal and everything to do with honoring jazz icon Dizzy Gillespie. A sleek, sassy opening ensemble, a la Alvin Ailey’s “Night Creature,” and a moonstruck jazz adagio for Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell and Clifton Brown showcase Wilson’s mastery of formal patterning.

In contrast, there are abundant character comedy and bravura steps for Brown, Guillermo Asca and Matthew Rushing midway through the piece -- as well as hot social dancing in the finale.

The crayon colors of Barbara Forbes’ costumes warn you not to take anything seriously here, but, as always, the dancing repays the most careful attention.

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Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.

When: Today and Saturday, 8 p.m. Also Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m.

Price: $20 to $65.

Contact: (714) 556-2787.