Original works at a premium

Rudy Perez’s abstract 2004 dance drama “DoublePlay” begins with a statement about bringing order out of chaos: four men (the elders in the cast) rearranging fallen chairs. However, some 40 minutes later, it warns us -- in speech and motion -- that our ordered lives and comfortable expectations are slated for demolition, that it’s now anything but paranoid to look up at the sky and scream.

Revived or, in Perez’s term, “revisited” for the annual three-week multidisciplinary NOW (New Original Works) Festival at the REDCAT on Thursday, “DoublePlay” uses those non-dancing, task-oriented elders as one texture in its action plan. A group of improvisational guest dancers in bright play clothes adds a sense of imperiled innocence. And Perez’s own company (formally dressed) contributes the feeling of growing unease and danger that he conjures from the simplest walking, watching and crawling activities.

Jeff Boynton’s score supplies a cornucopia of styles, and the text (drawn from early writings by Gertrude Stein) becomes a structural building block as well as another invitation to link the work to current events.

You might argue that Perez trusts talk too much and movement too little -- that it takes too long for significant dancing to begin. But “DoublePlay” remains genuinely original and accomplished, making it an anomaly on a program otherwise devoted to pieces that stay in the shadow of earlier creations.

For example, Michael Kidd’s film-noir parody “The Girl Hunt Ballet” in the film “The Band Wagon” has been a classic for more than half a century. So what did Madeleine Bernatchez hope to achieve by reworking the same ideas in her mini-musical “Moonshine” -- without Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse or even sustained choreography?

Yes, her text offered some clever takes on hard-bitten detective-and-moll lingo, and the rhythmic match between typing and tap-dancing proved imaginative (though it needed development).

But sexual stereotypes in contemporary popular music are just as exaggerated as those of the Chandler/Spillane era, so maybe Bernatchez ought to be looking at her own world (as Perez does) instead of cobbling together just another derivative, backdated cruise ship charade.

REDCAT publicity tells us that Hector Aristizabal’s “In the Forest de / Lirios” depicts his two dead brothers (one murdered, the other lost to AIDS). But as directed by B.J. Dodge, this one-man performance can’t begin to approach the mastery of role-playing and, in particular, identification with long-dead matriarchs that dancer/performance artist David Rousseve has made unforgettable in pieces about the violence in his own family history.

With a text by Diane Lefer, the work aims for the rough attack of street theater and takes the phrase “family tree” literally, using clumps of foliage to represent various characters in Aristizabal’s story. Andrea Lieberherr’s music and sound effects become indispensable, and Aristizabal unfailingly pumps up the energy needed to take us to the harrowing finale.

But there’s nothing here that breaks our hearts the way Rousseve did with his tribute to an afflicted pet rat, no fusion of performer and role that might cut through all the mechanics of playacting, no illusion that this story has found its ultimate theatrical form.

It’s new because Aristizabal hasn’t done it before, but a generation of distinguished performance artists working on local stages has made it look very familiar -- and preliminary.

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NOW Festival

Where: REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall, 631 W. 2nd St.,

Los Angeles

When: 8:30 p.m. today

Price: $14 to $18

Info: (213) 237-2800;

www.redcat.org