A tip for Oxford Street: no point in forcing the issue

Beautiful, well-made dance can be found in the simple sway of a hip, an elegant lunge or the delicious curve of an arm. It cannot be forced on the body or made lyrical by dint of a toothy smile and over-emoting.

But there was little unforced Thursday night at Santa Monica’s Miles Memorial Playhouse, where the 2-year-old, locally based Oxford Street Dance Theater, co-directed by Michelle Garcia and Marissa Lavine, offered scant choreographic invention in seven premieres grouped under the inauspicious banner “Sophos/Moros.” The printed program translated this title as “wise moron.” Despite the earnest efforts of the troupe’s eight dancers, the evening’s accent was not on the “wise.”

A notable exception was “Seven Preludes,” a work set to Chopin by guest choreographer Irene Feigenheimer, a formidable dance world presence for many decades. Here Jeanette Carol Cassisi, Garcia and Lavine brought the music to life: A slowly arching back melted into an unexpected turn; skittering feet froze, unafraid of stillness; figures spun until they stopped with arms outstretched, in a tableau of contemplative joy.

Another trio, Debra Varnado Lucas’ “To Thee I Pray,” proved the opposite. In this exercise in pap, Garcia, Lavine and Kristina G. Musni literalized the R&B; song, falling to their knees, for example, on cue.

Larger ensemble works fared no better, with the small stage a near collision course for Garcia’s overwrought quintet “More Mountains Than Valleys.” The lone male, Johnny Evans (in his only appearance), was overworked in a sea of awkward partnering and unsteady arabesques.

Lavine’s painful “Inner Voices” featured five women (including Abigail Wong and veteran dancer Bonnie Lavin-Hughes, whose credits include performing with Tandy Beal in 1978) spewing feminist diatribes while clutching their heads in a silly angst mode. Lavine’s flashy solo “Broken,” set to Led Zeppelin, had her feverishly cavorting with a chair between bouts of hair-tossing, high-kicking and why-have-you-left-me-this-way slithering.

“La Llorona,” Garcia’s take on the Mexican tale of a “crying woman” who drowns her children, featured five females flaunting flimsy squares of fabric and was brought down by their incessant rolling on the floor.

Completing the program, Lavin-Hughes’ “Long Way a Come You’ve Baby?” was a playful foray into a catty, Baroque-tinged ballroom world.

Oxford Street, whose recent performances have been in hospitals, nursing homes and schools, should look more to the likes of Feigenheimer or Lavin-Hughes to understand what makes deep, meaningful movement language.

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Oxford Street Dance Theater

Where: Miles Memorial Playhouse, 1130 Lincoln Blvd., Santa Monica

When: 8 p.m. today and 2 p.m. Sunday

Price: $15

Contact: (310) 254-5222