A troupe’s wobbly first steps

Right now, the Joseph Allen Decker Dance Company is a work in progress -- and perhaps Decker has chosen the wrong city for its home base.

In its debut at the Ivar Theatre on Friday, the company opened with a three-part Bob Fosse tribute that lacked the choreographic detail and technical exactitude that define Fosse style and was so abundantly in evidence a few weeks ago in “Chicago” down the street at the Pantages. Nor could Decker’s rock and pop dances match the flair and originality on view in the Key Club’s monthly choreographer’s showcases.

A former member of Denver’s excellent Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Company, Decker assembled standard jazz step-combinations proficiently, although usually without a sense of flow or build. Moreover, too many of his dozen dancers looked under-rehearsed, with the women continually falling out of wobbly double-turns and the men often fumbling their partnering tasks. Straining to look sexy didn’t help.

Pieces in which Decker and the dancers took inspiration from powerful music proved the strongest entries in the 16-part program. The yearning -- and fury -- of Nine Inch Nails’ “Something I Can Never Have,” for instance, propelled “Masochism,” a dance drama about blocked desire that broke Decker’s pattern of empty-headed showcases and delirious sexual charades.

Similarly, “Masochism” co-choreographer Sarah Ford used the anger in Tracey Chapman’s “Behind the Wall” to fuel an intense, effective solo for herself.

Works by company members Jennifer Henry, Nobutaka Mochimaru and Ross Graves (with Tia Vasiliou) mostly settled for stale lovelorn funk, but guest choreographer Murray Phillips contributed an apocalyptic sextet titled “Fallen” that provided plenty of unpredictable changes of impetus and partnerships.

Decker’s “Too Darn Hot” finale boasted a confident professionalism and even ease, but neither this breezy, large-scale showpiece nor the evening as a whole began to suggest what his company might offer that wasn’t already abundantly available on the Southern California dance scene.

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Joseph Allen Decker Dance Company

Where: Ivar Theatre, 1601 Ivar Ave., Hollywood

When: Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.

Price: $20-$25

Contact: (310) 888-8075