Hot bodies, cool attitudes

Is dance a hiding place? It certainly can be a beautiful, comforting refuge for audiences. In a 19-part program of local work in Hollywood on Friday, the art seemed primarily a way for young performers to ignore everything in the world and in their lives except how good it feels to dance, and how good they look doing it.

Hot bodies and cool attitude dominated this wide-ranging showcase at the FOCUSfish studio complex, an event serving as a benefit for Kitty McNamee’s Hysterica Dance Company. Nearly everyone overloaded pieces with engulfing, nonstop motion that offered plenty of promising ideas but little development, cumulative effect or afterimage.

Whether you were watching a delirious Lebanese folklorico-style quintet (Alkhoyoul Dance Theatre), a phenomenal cross-dressing Middle Eastern solo on stilts (Trey Knight) or contemporary pieces, large and small, the dancing remained high on skill and largely content-free except when borrowing significance from taped accompaniments.

Aimee Zannoni built an affecting character solo (“Live to see yourself begin LIVING”) out of a Tori Amos ballad, and Paolo Alcedo exuded limber sensitivity in his “Paglisan Mo” solo to the music of Cucurucucu Paloma. In “Teal,” Lisa K. Lock demonstrated spectacular pliancy on pointe to an intense sound collage.

But only Chris Stanley’s solo, “1,” dared to embrace dead silence, commanding attention through bold physical rhythms, sudden shifts in dynamics and the inventive development of his positional themes.

Nina McNeely (“Narke”), Jennifer Backhaus-McIvor (“Home”) and Alcides Valente (“Humanos”) all depicted individuals learning to accommodate themselves to group energies and identities. But Maria Gillespie and Monica Gillette provided the deepest exploration of relationships in their downbeat “Prologue of an Altered Day.”

The vibrant commercial dance scene showed its muscle and flair in pieces by R.J. Durell (“Inside Out”), Adam Parson (“States of Steel”), Andre Fuentes (“Innuendo”) and Bubba Carr (“Rewind, Travel On”), adding personal embellishments to preexisting modes of expression.

Alone in the realm of movement theater, Hassan Christopher and Marissa LaBog buoyantly illustrated a satiric spoken text on gender issues in an excerpt from their “Concrete Jungle.” But the crucial moment of climax, or conquest, proved strictly verbal; its movement expression simply wasn’t there.

Completing the program: pieces by McNamee and Denise Leitner that were previously reviewed.