Chris Elam’s Misnomer Dance Theater fuses an odd mix of sensibilities. His partnering style had some of the sculptural plastique of the MOMIX-Pilobolous school — at times the dancers’ body parts get confused, so that you have to blink and ask yourself "Whose head is whose?" or " Are those waving appendages legs, or are they arms?" But Elam’s work isn’t limited to this genre of gimmickry. Having studied in Indonesia and Turkey, his movement brings out smaller-scale articulations for the fingers, wrists, and shoulders. From Bali, he seems to have picked up a multi-directional quality. And perhaps from yoga, or more likely from an innate lack of ligaments, he has acquired the flexibility of a contortionist. All this makes Elam a unique mover and contributes to the originality of his choreography.

Elam’s solo Cast-Iron Crutches best exploited his uncanny physicality. The lights faded up dimly, casting an amber glow on his nearly nude body. In frieze-like profile, he stood doubled over himself with his arms looped through one leg and behind his back. Slowly, sinuously, to the grand strains of a John Williams score, he stretched and arched as if trying to free himself from personal bondage. As he continued to wind his ensnarled torso through his limbs, the choreographer gave the impression that his body was a landscape he was forced to navigate. At one point, Elam turned to the audience, opened his aims and began to repeatedly raise his foot into a passe position. His downcast expression — of effort and innocence — made this motion seem like a small mountain on this journey.

In Dreams of Your Acceptance, Elam’s duet for Abbey Dehnert and Amber Sloan, the dancers’ bodies served as a play environment. The piece began with Dehnert curled around Sloan, like a koala hanging on her sideways. Soon they were nearer the ground — one on all fours, the other on her back, sheltered underneath. The women, both clad in white shirts and pale-blue pants, often seemed to merge, and seemed to delight in finding ways to join parts: Linking elbows, they pranced in circles; locking heads, they counterbalanced; touching butts, one sat while the other served as a chair. At the dance’s end, they stood on their heads, feet entwined, nd blew at each other, as if to topple the other. This was a nice, light touch and a satisfying finish to a charming piece.

In contrast, Elam’s Breakfast With You, a love duet set to music by Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen, portrayed the choreographer and Jocelyn Tobias as separate beings who struggled with togetherness. In a departure from traditional gender roles, she was the one who did most of the lifting. At one point he jumped onto her, wrapping himself around her body in a display of clingy vulnerability. Later, he poised stiffly in a flat-back shape whole she swerved him this way and that. A prolonged rolling embrace united them for a moment, but their connection soon dissipated. Toward Breakfast’s end, Elam burst into small flails and stomps to attract Tobias’s attention, which wandered elsewhere.