Phoenix rises, only to fall flat

It seems there’s nothing Phoenix Dance Theatre can’t do -- except inspire (or acquire) great choreography.

In a three-part program in the Luckman Complex at Cal State L.A. on Friday, this British contemporary ensemble displayed exemplary technical refinement as well as invigorating vitality and an appetite for diverse stylistic challenges.

The opening solo in Henri Oguike’s quintet “Signal,” for instance, out-Twyla’d prime, early Tharp through Tiia Ourila’s brilliant execution of high-speed muscular isolations, off-balance balances and lots of other twisty, wiggly bravura.

The tour de force continued when Tanya Richam-Odoi joined Ourila, but the choreography soon grew simpler and more conventional. And keeping much of the piece near the back of the stage in dim light didn’t help.

Sometimes Oguike focused on setting up dramatic expectations (two men competing for a woman, for example) and then deliberately left them dangling. Elsewhere, he made the vocabulary pointlessly mundane, as in all the circular jogging.

Recorded music for Japanese drums, string and wind instruments accompanied the piece and, at one point, Oguike backed the dancers with three flaming braziers. But the heat and intricacy of the opening solo was never matched, much less surpassed -- not even when Kevin Turner joined Ourila in a fast, accomplished partnership.

In “Forest,” Phoenix revived a nearly 30-year-old work by much-loved British modern dance pioneer Robert Cohan, a former dancer in the Martha Graham company.

The challenge here involved dancing with unerring softness, almost as if underwater. Brian Hodgson’s score set animal cries, bursts of thunder and other environmental sounds in a kind of wind tunnel, and the nine dancers all managed to look simultaneously windblown and pressureless at any speed.

Chest-slaps occasionally accented the extraordinarily plush, supple, unexpectedly elegant execution. But Cohan ran out of ideas long before the fade-out, so he recycled alternating sections for the men and women, along with various solos and duets -- just fine individually but without taking “Forest” any place it hadn’t already been.

Although all the performances remained faultless, the duet for Ourila and Yann Seabra proved especially memorable for the serene balances, the perfectly matched placements and the mastery of unorthodox gymnastic turning-lifts that took the choreography beyond honed athleticism into romantic metaphor.

Cohan protege Darshan Singh Bhuller became Phoenix artistic director four years ago, ushering the company to this 25th anniversary season -- and its first coast-to-coast U.S. tour. His whimsical “Eng-er-land” reflected his interest in multimedia spectacle, social commentary and movement eccentricity but never suggested that he’s capable of fusing such interests in a unified, original style.

Essentially an outsider’s look at British pop culture, the work featured music by Blessed and a series of elaborate, projected environments credited to KMA. The images often were quasi-realistic, as when a giant loudspeaker throbbed to rock ‘n’ roll or when a dizzying array of city streets zoomed across the stage space. Various abstractions (stars, clouds, pulsing rectangles) also materialized.

Placed between a transparent gauze scrim at the front of the stage and a screen behind them, the dancers sometimes seemed to be moving through a torrential downpour, detailed down to the tiny splashes at their feet. But the effects could also be as focused and grossly comic as an arc-shaped stream coming from a man supposedly urinating in the men’s room of a bar.

Throughout, it was fun to watch some of the company’s most sophisticated dancers enjoy Bhuller’s adaptations of pop dances. Lisa Welham made a swinging beach babe, cavorting in projected surf, and Douglas Thorpe excelled at every loose-limbed, throwaway opportunity. Seabra periodically appeared as a Sikh observer bemused by the hedonistic Brits and the only one of the nine-member cast smart enough to carry an umbrella when it rained.

Unfortunately, this was one of those arbitrary suites that could have been five minutes long -- or five hours. No evident logic or structure made it seem more than an FX gallery: Bhuller playing with theater toys. Let’s hope he finds a more compelling creative purpose for them next time around.