Choreography steps over its own feelings

It didn’t take long to realize that locally based choreographer Regina Klenjoski set her sights on sweepy, swirly, swoopy overkill at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre on Friday -- to the near-complete exclusion of any forthright, purposeful, deeply felt modern dance.

Whatever ideas or feelings had inspired her three works had long since been buried under an avalanche of diversionary steps. Even “Cristian’s Lullaby,” a rhapsodic new Klenjoski solo commemorating the birth of her son last November, got lost in too many ruffles and sparkles on her costume, too many empty decorative effects in her dancing.

Both her “Love Lies Waiting” (2003) and her new “Streetscapes” focused on showpiece dancing for her six-member company while pretending, every once in a while, to depict how people simultaneously need and fear relationships. Each also suffered from false endings and the sense that the various segments had been thrown together in no particular order.

However, the sweetly sentimental “Love Lies Waiting” had the benefit of Mark Fitchett’s richly textured original music (played live by a 10-member ensemble), while the more somber “Streetscapes” reflected the extremes of Drew Schnurr’s taped sound score with every kind of futuristic charade from early Alwin Nikolais robot moves to those animated promo spots for the Sci-Fi Channel -- plus neon and strobes.

Klenjoski has a talent for dance counterpoint, spatial design and, most of all, complex step combinations. But her program grew so obnoxiously glib and slick that you wished she could be exiled to one of those farms run by butoh masters where she’d have to plant radishes until she understood the connection of the human body to the earth and its own movement processes. Anything but this.

Though they looked locked into their roles rather than released by them, the valiant, disciplined Mauricio Alconedo, Jeff Bulkley, Pamela Debiase, Marissa Labog, Carlos Rodriguez and Rachael Welborn were responsible for whatever pleasures the evening offered.