Entertainment

‘Mechanics’ needs tuneup

Karole Armitage’s “Mechanics of the Dance Machine” sounds amazing on paper. This new work by the former “punk ballerina” — who also danced with Merce Cunningham — is billed as a mix of ballet, improvisation and fractal geometry, set in part to a score by the grandson of Sergei Prokofiev, of “Peter and the Wolf” fame.

That’s a lot of hype to live up to. And while this “Machine” makes an entertaining hour of dance, it doesn’t have that much under the hood.

Armitage tries for a mood as mod as she knows how. Her 15 dancers wear as little as possible — Lycra briefs and bikinis — and the couples stare at each other and grapple in orange light. It looks as if we’re watching them dance in a fishbowl.

The recorded “Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra” by Gabriel Prokofiev, the piece’s DJ composer, samples Glenn Gould and Bach, but not Grandpa Sergei. The piece, occasionally muffled, sounds like a nightclub two doors down.

“Dance Machine” has striking moments. Former New York City Ballet principal Charles Askegard performs a pas de deux that stretches him past his usual courtly partnering roles. Emily Wagner, her hair in two short henna-colored sprouts, keeps him on his toes in a tough-minded duet where she pushes him around, grinning like an evil Pippi Longstocking.

The rest of the group enters in couples, one person gripping the other’s head while they squirm.

But most often, Armitage likes to play it cool. A few of the dancers perform for us, but mostly they stay dispassionate, walking on and offstage like Siamese cats. Yet despite the title, nothing feels mechanical, and at the end, all the conceptualizing about fractal geometry isn’t an angle we see from the seats.

It’s impossible to stay cutting edge forever. Armitage made her breakout work, “Drastic-Classicism,” more than three decades ago. With so many others stripping ballet down to short shorts and shooting it up with sexy moves to the latest music, what was cutting edge is now mainstream.

When all the stuff has been strutted, this machine is a solid one, but it’s closer to a 1981 DeLorean than a 2013 Lamborghini.