Sensational showpieces plus cheap thrills

In “J’Arrive,” flamboyant Barcelona-based dancer and choreographer Marta Carrasco celebrates 10 years of creative work by performing some of her flashiest sequences out of context, as showpieces. And some of them remained sensational Friday at the Los Angeles Theater Center downtown.

For instance, one passage from “Aiguardent” (seen locally in 2003) found her repeatedly throwing herself against a vertical mattress -- and magically sticking to it in various gravity-defying poses, thanks to invisible adhesive strips.

In an excerpt from “Blanc d’Ombra” (seen locally in 2004), she appeared nearly nude behind an enormous sheet of shimmering transparent plastic, pressing against it, pulling it into her mouth and sending waves of orange and blue light rocketing out from her body across the sheet.

Elsewhere, wearing an oversized hoop skirt, she leaned forward and back in impossibly off-balance positions while “birthing” one baby doll after another. And her obsession with a giant mannequin or statue became so extreme that she eventually disappeared inside it.

If all these solos depended on special effects, they also released Carrasco’s unstinting intensity, her ability to make you believe in her actions as an expression of overwhelming need.

Enlisting five young actors and co-director Carme Portaceli to assist her, Carrasco placed herself in a neo-Expressionist world, with four upended, rough-hewn packing crates stuffed with dolls, costumes and hats and shoes rolling in and out to serve both as a front curtain and wings.

Carrasco’s taped accompaniments ranged from Mozart and Mahler to Jacques Brel and Tom Waits, and had she stayed front and center all the time, her 70-minute cavalcade might have been both a useful retrospective and confirmation of her remarkable power as a dancing actress.

Unfortunately, scene after scene belonged to her supporting cast, performing nasty little vignettes in an antic, superficial style, sometimes wearing masks, sometimes clownish makeup. Two of these scenes showed effeminate men attacking a lone woman with great glee. In the first, Robert Gonzalez and Xavi Saez mauled, browbeat and humiliated Cristina Sirvent. In the second, Roser Puigdevall suffered greater abuse.

Yes, it was only cartoon violence, but no male received such treatment -- except, briefly, a male dressed as a female. And what was the point -- never to trust a guy in high-heeled shoes? Or never to watch performances that turn brutality into sleazy divertissements?

The cheap thrills Friday included the reworked finale to “Aiguardent,” originally a horrifying look at a woman’s capitulation to alcoholism but here just a madhouse beggars’ banquet with everyone sloshing water and spitting watermelon everywhere.

Every so often, Carme Gonzalez passed across the stage dragging an IV stand -- but it was these portions of “J’Arrive” that needed the life support.