From Frette, hit-and-miss isn’t bad at all

Brian Frette is a choreographer who misses half of everything he tries. But the other half reveals a distinctive, ambitious and often surprising artist growing toward mastery.

“The Happy Hour” at the Lillian Theater in Hollywood begins as an uneven jazz-dance depiction of a holiday party from hell, then decks the halls with outtakes from the history of philosophy, a sensitive modern-dance depiction of the Annunciation and a finale expressing no story or theme other than showcasing most of the company in an energetic, hard-edged rock sextet.

Frette has a disarming way of making formal dances evolve from everyday actions and eventually crumble back into them, but he frequently ignores the emotional and rhythmic impulses of the music -- to his peril. Moreover, whenever he goes up against world-class choreographers, he loses, as in a sex-war duet to “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” that looks timid compared with the one in William Forsythe’s widely seen “Love Songs.”

Frette’s easygoing, mercurial “Beyond the Sea” party duet for Chad Everett Allen and Eddie David displays an unforced command of ballet-influenced jazz expression and skillful partnering ploys. However, it needs more, since Allen is supposed to be the reason why party host Vincent Boyle suffers bouts of despair leading to suicide. A few seconds of character pantomime just aren’t enough to make us believe in this relationship.

Although two duets for Caitlyn Carradine and Rowdy Metzger can’t reconcile conflicts between taut drama and expansive virtuosity, the dancers emerge faultless -- and Metzger, in particular, commands an intensity that seems barely leashed and always on the verge of explosion.

Frette can generate something like the same sense of danger, but he squanders it in talk during the “Lucifer’s Argument” solo. But when silent and subtly responsive in the “Breath of Heaven” Annunciation scene with Wendy Herrick, he helps this foray into religious dance-drama sustain its focus through both intimate expressive passages and demanding lifts intended to take physical prowess into the realm of the spiritual.

As a project, “The Happy Hour” may have begun as a way for Frette and his dancing chums to get together and show off their considerable skills. But perhaps as an afterthought, conceptual darkness and outright eccentricity intruded, and the result goes everywhere and nowhere, yet without ever being boring or wasting the audience’s time.

Right now, many American dancers feel trained and ready for the next big thing but see nothing on the horizon but mediocrity. In trying to push his own skills to another level, Frette is attempting to become the breakthrough creator that the future of his art so badly needs. That alone makes him worth watching.

*

‘The Happy Hour’

Where: Lillian Theater, 1076 N. Lillian Way, Hollywood

When: Today, 8 p.m., and Sunday,

2 p.m.

Price: $15; children and seniors, $10

Contact: (323) 665-3903