Seeing is believing in troupe’s intensity, virtuosity

Violent gesticulation by all the limbs of the body is the stock in trade of Emio Greco/PC, a forceful, commanding seven-dancer company from Amsterdam that performed Friday in the UCLA Live series in Royce Hall.

Too deliberate and even oppressive in its prevailing sense of control to be considered visceral, the dancing makes constant displacements of weight, flailing unisons at high speed and sheer stamina into displays of virtuosity. There are also occasional ballet steps -- especially from Jordi Martin de Antonio -- and lots of volcanic torso articulation whenever Greco solos.

Indeed, the style of the company’s full-evening “Rimasto Orfano” (Abandoned Orphan) might be called post-Ek, since it radically extends and abstracts the supremely twitchy, impulsive movement language of well-known contemporary Swedish choreographer Mats Ek.

Throughout the 75-minute work, the dancers wear gauzy, ashen smocks, but eventually De Antonio strips to briefs and you can see how the choreography projects from his spine through his whole musculature. Dancing this fully invested is always powerful, even when some of the specific motifs (silent screams, for instance) have become neo-Expressionist cliches.

With the choreography, set design, lighting and sound concept credited to Italian dance maker Greco and Dutch theater director Pieter C. Scholten, “Rimasto Orfano” begins by repudiating speech. “Ladies and gentlemen,” announces the hyper- glamorous Sawami Fukuoka, “Emio Greco is dead.” Greco then dances a solo. So much for verbal truth-telling -- believe what you see.

Structurally, the work evolves from that Greco solo to a duet with Nicola Monaco, then a trio with Suzan Tunca, then a quartet with Barbara Meneses Gutierrez before unanimity shatters to the sound of an explosion or fearsome crash and Greco solos again.

Motifs include running backward, collapsing sideways, compulsively rotating the head and, every once in a while, a social-dance pose or another fleeting reminder of everyday life.

Framed by banks of floor-lights, the three-sided set suggests walls of ash, and as sirens grow ever closer, you might think of “Rimasto Orfano” as a disaster epic: a vision of people unhinged by the destruction of their world, trying to process their pain any way they can.

Greco and Scholten insist on no specific meanings, but the unrelieved intensity of the dancing and the bursts of threatening music by Michael Gordon invite you to relate the action to whatever catastrophes, or abandoned orphans, speak to you most deeply. Right now, there are plenty of choices....