An uneven evening from Sean Curran

Choreographer Sean Curran, with his crackling footwork and prophetic, heart-spun gestures, can embody whole lost worlds in his rock-solid frame. Yet when his palette is his company rather than himself, he can, at times, draw an emotional blank, despite the piercingly articulate, nonstop movement combinations coloring the stage.

So it was last night in the Celebrity Series of Boston's presentation of the Sean Curran Company at the Tsai Performance Center. The four dances on the program spanned a period of nine years. Curiously, the two most resonant ones, "St. Petersburg Waltz" and "Aria/Apology," were both crafted in 2005 - apparently a time of explosive creativity for the artist. The oldest piece, "The Nothing That Is Not There and the Nothing That Is" (1998), reminds us of the days when Curran, formerly a dancer with Bill T. Jones and the original New York company of "Stomp," was finding his choreographic footing. The newest one, "Social Discourse," a world premiere, does the opposite: It makes you wonder whether Curran, in flipping his inspiration from classical music to selections from "The Eraser," by Thom Yorke of Radiohead, may have lost his way.

"St. Petersburg Waltz," to Meredith Monk's music by the same name, simultaneously sends you tunneling back to the shtetls of Eastern Europe and rocketing forward from there, through Nazi marches and untold sorrows, and finally to a moment of shuddering prayer. Curran, in bowler, vest, and black pants, mesmerizes in his "channeling" (his word) of Monk's Russian-Jewish grandfather. In Curran's hands, a gesture as simple as a shrug can signify the erasing of an entire way of life.

"Aria/Apology," for three men and two women, also sets up a clashing contrast. Arias from Handel operas sung by Renee Fleming alternate with recorded confessions of crimes ranging from muggings and killings to rape and incest. The voices are real: they're compiled from a phone service called the Apology Line. The vocabulary is stark, even formal, yet tempered by idiosyncratic quirks: A baroque duet gives way to a man's spinning a woman topsy-turvy, then setting her down in a wide second-position plie. Three dancers roll as two somberly step over them; then the rollers rise and become the walkers. The piece smacks the sacred against the profane, the spiritual against the base - remarking on how the two can co-exist within us, and questioning the whether there is forgiveness after great pain.

A rigorous structure defines "The Nothing That Is Not There and the Nothing That Is," a piece that explores the tension of relationships. It is set to five solo piano selections from Leos Janacek's "On an Overgrown Path," and features two men and two women engaged in simple walks, deep lunges, the pushes and pulls that define a couple.

Alas, the long-awaited premiere, "Social Discourse," falls surprisingly flat. A dance for six in vibrantly colored tops, the piece is a roiling nonstop affair, more gymnastics and almost club dancing than a typical Curran piece, driven by history and a kind of aristocracy. The foibles of humans. Our vulnerabilities in the face of crises. These are the themes I expect from a Sean Curran concert. The dancers even in this piece were rip-roaring beautiful. But I want the wistfulness and wisdom that lie deep in Curran's heart.