A radical body of movement

Thirty or so years ago, many critics, audiences and dance professionals found radical and even threatening the notion that anything could be dance -- that movement drawn from such nontraditional sources as sports and shaped by a choreographic vision could stand as an equal beside long-established techniques of dance expression.

Enter a Dartmouth collective known as Pilobolus Dance Theatre, seductive in body, whimsical in mind, about as unradical and nonthreatening as contemporary dance had ever been, but still the Trojan horse for a genuine revolution.

That revolution reached the Los Angeles Music Center long ago, but Pilobolus itself appeared there for the first time Friday, sharing a weekend at the Ahmanson Theatre with the Los Angeles-based Diavolo Dance Theatre. Formed in 1992, 21 years after Pilobolus, Diavolo inherited and extended all the creative freedoms that Pilobolus and its offshoots made not only possible but popular.

The Ahmanson double-header (Pilobolus on Friday and Sunday, Diavolo twice on Saturday) inaugurated a new era in the Music Center’s sponsorship of dance, one occasioned by the opening of Disney Hall later this year and the greater opportunities for dance presentation in the complex’s older theaters. In a year that has given local audiences major statements of what we can call the Pilobolus philosophy from the Momix and Elizabeth Streb companies, the engagement brought the Music Center not only a double dose of high accessibility and muscle power but also the same zest for collaborative experiment that Pilobolus has embodied since 1971.

From that year came “Walklyndon,” choreographed by Robby Barnett, Lee Harris, Moses Pendleton and Jonathan Wolken as a series of comic character walks punctuated by collisions and sight gags: silent vaudeville that still looked fresh on Friday.

Antic Pilobolean Americana and an appetite for the rough and tumble also dominated “The Brass Ring,” choreographed by Michael Tracy and commissioned for the 2002 Winter Olympics. After a mock-portentous opening, complete with company-signature people towers, came pileups and tangles and seesaw maneuvers, along with brash courtship strategies and outbursts of cartoon violence: Matt Kent whomping people on the head, for example, or Renee Jaworski and Jennifer Macavinta exchanging nasty kicks.

Pendleton’s “Day Two” (1980) initially focused on physical metaphor: the way quivering limbs, legs pointed in the air or feet brushing the floor could suggest wild creatures of various species. But some of its most celebrated effects -- the company emerging from a huge, rippling floor canopy -- linked it to the creative stance of Diavolo, a company obsessed with paraphernalia.

However, the companies’ performances heightened differences as much as shared philosophies. Both companies offered recent trapeze duets, but where Alison Chase’s “Ben’s Admonition” used the virtuosity of Kent and Ras Mikey C to trace an intense, ever-changing relationship, Diavolo’s “Tombe du Ciel” settled for generalized cirque-style ecstasy in the aerial choreography for Sita Acevedo and C. Derrick Jones.

Indeed, for all its skill and daring, Jacques Heim’s company never matched the expressive clarity that anchors Pilobolus’ most freewheeling showpieces. In Diavolo’s revised “Une Femme Cachee” (1997), Laura Everling balanced atop free-standing doors, but it never became clear why the doors were there instead of the gymnastics beam that usually serves as a platform for this kind of exercise.

Embellished with slides of Disney Hall, “D2R B” (1997) set the dancers hurtling up onto a vertical platform -- something like a pegboard with loops for them to grab. “Apex” (1998) cleverly adopted high stepladders and even more cleverly parodied itself in an epilogue. The sheer prowess remained phenomenal, but these pieces never went anywhere. They functioned as tests of athleticism.

With its high Romantic score by Nathan Wang and anguished Acevedo solos at the beginning and end, the two-part “Trajectoire” (1999 and 2001) wanted to be more than just a thrilling, full-company workout on and under a huge, rocking boat-like sculpture designed by Daniel Wheeler. It wanted to be choreography.

Sometimes it succeeded -- not in its misguided artsy-posy modern dancey charades, but rather when the boat seemed to be rocking by itself and the dancers could leap on and off without counting but through some deep, authentic impetus that connected everyone on stage and everyone watching. In 2003, as in 1971, anything can be dance, but it still takes a genuine choreographic vision -- and that’s what Diavolo needs to work on in its second decade.