A lusty show of aging and youth

Mary Cochran in a performance of ''Valeska's Vitriol.'' (Lois Greenfield/ File 2005)

In the introductory remarks for her concert "Salad Days," Harvard Dance Center's packed-house season opener Saturday night, choreographer Sara Hook referred to a time of being "fresh and green and perhaps full of indiscretion." A former soloist with Nikolais Dance Theater, Hook crafted several of the program's works, including the titular premiere, as a jab at youthful hubris and naivete.

Interestingly, however, the most compelling work on the program was less about youth than the remembrance of youth and the indignities of aging, portrayed from the vantage point of someone well past her prime. "The Valeska Trilogy" is an homage to the late Valeska Gert, a cabaret performance artist of the Weimar period in Berlin, and as danced by the indomitable Mary Cochran, it was both bawdily humorous and touchingly sad.

As Valeska, the former Paul Taylor star comically twirled and skipped off balance with the enthusiasm of a performer with far more energy than skill. Another terrific veteran performer, hometown boy David Parker, provided the backdrop, trailing Cochran across stage with swirling orange curtains, at one point ensnaring her in the voluminous folds. When the music picked up, Cochran scooted into overdrive then stopped, feigning exhaustion. Parker stole the moment, strutting and shimmying across stage in pursuit of his own audience accolades.

Parker also provided an interlude in the trilogy, miming a weight lifter preparing to hoist a 500-pound barbell. He pranced and stretched, flexing his muscles, throwing in a few tendus and a prayer. As he strained to lift it, the barbell actually seemed to get lighter, pulling him up on his toes and into a soft shoe.

In the second dance, "Valeska's Vitriol," Cochran manically worked the crowd, jiggling sagging breasts, rubbing her crotch, clutching her bottom, and batting her eyes as she tipsily trolled the room. When she pulled a young audience member onstage, she ramped up the vulgarity (use your imagination), ultimately giving her his panties in a gesture both crudely funny and pathetic. Parker deftly played a psychoanalyst, interrogating the hapless patron. "How did it make you feel?"

In the final dance, Cochran played Valeska like a delusional silent film star, lost in her own memories. In the end, Parker gently carried her offstage.

Cochran also got to play the youthful flip side in "Rue," dancing like a little girl playing dress up, and "Patriot Act UP." In this send-up of shallow patriotism, she was a jingoistic marionette, marching, waving a flag, often while chewing gum or sucking on a lollipop.

Erika Randall embodied both petulance and yearning in "Game Point," a solo juxtaposing long-lined extensions, reaches, and lunges with foot-stomping and elbow jabs. Paige Cunningham and Angela Fleddermann Miller were dynamite in the new "Salad Days," a convoluted game of keep up. Competition quickly replaced camaraderie, as they whipped out fouettes, grand jetes, jazzy spins, and fast footwork. The choreography was disjunct, a bit obtuse, and, like several of Hook's pieces, tried too hard to be funny, but the performers were riveting to the end.