Dance : Making Speedy Waves at South Bay Center

No dog yelps were emitted Friday by the El Camino College audience--only the polite sound of hands clapping. But had Waves strutted its stuff on an inner-city stage, rather than at the suburban South Bay Center for the Arts, there would have been nonstop barks of appreciation.

The formula: a fast-moving program of short takes, most of it formalized disco dancing underpinned by a grinding energy and relentless hard-sell sex.

Choreographer/director Shimon Braun, whose background as a World War II survivor makes him an unlikely purveyor of rock-schlock, provides his 16-member troupe a dizzying array of numbers--all of them galvanized by bump/grind undulating torsos and displayed in Day-Glo glitz on shiny spandex.

Cartwheels and fouettes mingled inoffensively (both are stunts, right?), break dancers spun on their heads and acrobats flipped into fish-dives.

But this is not to suggest that Braun imposed foreign material on his dancers, for most of them looked like authentic refugees of the streets or of heavy metal or chains and leather. And they seemed genuinely to love what they performed--with a beaming, in-your-face pride of body, social identity and virtuosity.

Still, the absence of ideas, of subtlety, of abstraction and yes, even wit, takes its toll over a whole evening.

Waves cries out for a commercial venue.