Choreographed in Bella Lewitzky’s honor

The tribute to the internationally known dancer and choreographer Bella Lewitzky was initially conceived as a living bouquet to the woman affectionately considered the doyenne of modern dance in Southern California. But with her death last year at age 88, the program Saturday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts instead became an homage to her legacy, with four former company members each choreographing a new piece and the evening book-ended with two of her dances.

John Pennington, a member of the Lewitzky Company for 14 years, opened with her impish solo “On the Brink of Time.” Pennington and 10 other former company members closed the program with her innovative “Spaces Between.” It was the first time since the choreographer shut down her company in 1997 that the work had been performed, and it was ominously billed as the final performance by the Lewitzky dancers, who have gone their separate ways.

What happens now to her choreographic legacy is a deeply troubling question, since no institution is devoted to preserving it. Its richness could only be sampled in these two pieces. Both began simply -- “On the Brink” with a hand thrust out from the wings of the stage, and “Spaces Between” with the company crossing it with little hitch-steps. Both went on to accumulate complex, inventive, unpredictable movements that quickly exhausted intellectual comprehension but remained clear, visceral and delightful in impact.

“Spaces Between,” with its witty use of plexiglass hangings and platforms (designed by Lewitzky’s husband, former dancer and architect Newell Taylor Reynolds) and its amazing shadow projections at the close, especially achieved the sense of flight that had been her dream since childhood on a chicken ranch in San Bernardino.

For all their differences, the premieres had things in common: Pennington’s “Out Of” and Yolande Yorke-Edgell’s “Landscape, 2005” shared an interest in design; with Diana MacNeil’s “Step Out Music Up” and Michael Mizerany’s “Whirlwind, 2005,” it was relationships.

Both “Out Of” and “Landscape” had attractive production values, floor-to-ceiling Japanese-like scrolls in the first and a Picasso-like seashore tableau come to life in the second.

Li-Chun Chang established the rising corkscrew turns and space-devouring vocabulary that Denesa Chan, Jerrad Roberts, Diedre Smith and Annjeanette Walters took up in “Out Of.”

Kristin Brown, Jennifer Flanagan, Damian Jackson, Kristen Wilkinson and Yorke-Edgell began and ended “Landscape” with the same sculptural groupings, framing blown-about movements dictated by John Adams’ music.

Danced to a percolating, minimalist score by Jeff Rona, MacNeil’s “Step Out Music Up” began with Yvette Wulff and Kristen Wilkinson crisscrossing the stage in bounding movements of freedom until each encountered or was caught by Roger Gonzalez Hibner or Sean Greene, respectively. The tension then was between freedom and connection.

“Whirlwind,” danced to dark music by Arvo Part, was grimly serious, with Mizerany struggling in vain to connect with Alma Ramos, whose defensiveness was signaled rather overtly by her twisted, clasped hands held tightly in front of her pelvis.

All four new pieces showed technique and craft, but they were simplistic in comparison to the works of the master.