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In the premiere of Personals, to music by Nick Cave and Tuxedomoon, five men and five women fling and pose, purr and pet as they face the audience with empty, defiant and longing faces. The audience becomes the voyeurs, roaming the stage as though at their laptops, scanning profiles on Match.com. No happy endings are tendered in Personals. No one finds love or a good roll in the hay. Instead Todd Allen finds himself in a seizure state, resembling both a fit of epilepsy and masturbatory ecstasy. It’s not pretty, which is a departure for the Israel-born choreographer, known to make dance phrases that are full of grace.

Personals concerns dehumanization. In various line-ups the dancers become victims of their willingness to be put on “line.” But Gotheiner, unintentionally (or not) makes comment on the performer personality, who wants to be seen, admired and taken in by others. By drawing a parallel between unrequited love seekers and his performers who preen on the first row of the theater's seats, his dancers become desperados. Seated above them and in the dark my impulse was to look away.

In Gertrud, the 2007 dance in homage to Gertrud Kraus, a seminal figure for modern dance in Israel, Gotheiner offers sardonic whiffs of the Viennese-born battle axe, who settled in Palestine after touring her Expressionist troupe through the middle east. Throughout the dance, to music by Scott Killian, company members embody Gertrud. They smoke her cigarette, corral a dancer like an errant heifer and snap out choreographic orders like a four-star general. In 1930s-style bathing suits by Rabiah Toncelliti, the ten performers look like they are ready for a romp at the beach, but making dances under Kraus (who won the Israel Prize in 1963) was as serious as mapping boundaries between tribes. It required an exacting, unsentimental approach to moving the body through space. As one of Kraus’s favorite students in Tel Aviv, Gotheiner experienced this approach first-hand.

Like Kraus, Gotheiner began as a musician. And it is in the too-brief dance sections that Gotheiner demonstrates his musical phrasing talents by reconstructing how Gertrud taught syncopation: She sounded out “Pa-Pri-Kash, Gou-Lash” in time to a modified folk step. The sweetness in seeing lanky dancers beating out time while singing about a red spice made me understand why Gotheiner still holds Kraus so dear.

In the premiere of Sleeves to an unspecified work of Robert Schumann, Elisa King’s solo resembles the perambulations of one faced with an unanswered question. Repeatedly skimming the floor, King never declares a movement with force. Like the choreographer, she seems to be in search of something new, but the dance ends before King finds a distinctive thread to connect her thoughts or steps together.

For Gotheiner, whose troupe celebrates its 20th anniversary next year, making work that looks and feels unfinished isn’t a sign of failure. Like his mentor Kraus, he is more interested in exploration and taking risks than producing entertainments. Regardless, I hope that next year Gotheiner's dances will yield something more succinct and digestible. Concreteness in life can't be expected. Its illusion on stage, however, can be mouth watering—like the selection of the right spice to complete a dish.