Troupers run ‘Rings’ around the material

Choreographer Donna Sternberg may very well be the Salieri of modern dance, although mediocrity sometimes proved too generous a noun in a program dubbed “Rings” at Santa Monica’s Miles Playhouse on Saturday night.

Performed by Donna Sternberg & Dancers, the five recent works, including the titular premiere, lacked originality, insight or singular style (think “Around the Dance World in 80 Minutes”) and instead offered tedium.

Which isn’t to say that the performers -- Erin Longhofer, Sarah Catania, Tracey White, Katrina Jade and Shannon Schwait -- didn’t dance their hearts out. They did, but, unfortunately, too often in treacle mode. Sternberg, who founded the troupe in 1985, has run into a choreographic brick wall, with dancers flailing, flapping and flinging themselves about arbitrarily to mostly uninspired taped music. The amateurish lighting (uncredited) and lusterless costuming (Kiyomi Hara and Britten Landstrom) also proved fatal.

In “Flight” (2003), Sternberg’s homage to the Wright Brothers, the five women beat the birdlike motif to death, with spread-armed unisons and relentless leaping. Contrivance also permeated “Rings,” wherein the troupe gamely attempted a pop take on the Indian classical form bharata natyam, an occasional shoulder shimmy breaking up the endless flittering.

Last year’s “Maturity” achieved a modicum of depth, thanks, in part, to Cesar Franck’s music. Longhofer, Schwait and White (representing youth, middle age and old age) offered various tableaux, including spooning formations and muscular push-pull partnering. White, as she did throughout the night, shone, projecting authentic emotion in well-articulated moves.

Completing the program: “Gossiping to Death,” a 2004 work that explored a “Rashomon”-like scenario, was repetitive and unfocused. And in “There Are Hundreds of Ways to Kneel and Kiss the Ground” (2004), Sternberg threw in everything from pointe work and hip-hop-type cartwheels to knock-kneed Fosse dips in her celebration of dance as an art form. Sternberg, however, was unable to live up to the art part.