Veteran choreographer and modern-dance icon Twyla Tharp visited Zellerbach Hall last weekend with the world premiere of the three new pieces that make up Tharp!, the road show that Tharp plans to take on national and international tour over the next two years.

If the exclamation point after Tharp's name comes across as a tad precious, the program's three works, Sweet Fields, 66, and Heroes, provided ample evidence that the show ought more accurately to have been entitled Tharp®.

Tharp disbanded her 23-year-old company in 1988 in order to pursue other endeavors, notably The White Oak Project (her collaboration with Mikhail Baryshnikov) and commissions for new works and revivals from American Ballet Theater, The Paris Opera Ballet, London's Royal Ballet, and other companies.

For Tharp!, however, the choreographer assembled a touring group of 14 members chosen from extensive nationwide auditions, a process that introduced two major problems into the project: The dancers are very young (and they look it) and they don't know Tharp technique (and they show it). In other words, Tharp! looks exactly like what it is: a pickup company. The result is that Sweet Fields, 66, and Heroes have a diluted, second-hand feeling to them—something like the pale depictions of George Balanchine's great works that keep showing up in San Francisco Ballet programs.

Let me hasten to say that the members of the Tharp! ensemble are fine dancers who will probably go on to be even finer dancers, but there's no escaping the nagging sense that what Tharp! offers is an evening of Tharp dances set on someone else's company. The individual movements are executed correctly; the dedication of the dancers is obvious. But the heart and soul of Tharp is missing in action. Gone are the dancers like Sara Rudner and Shelley Washington who devoted themselves to Tharp for years and by whose maturity (in dance-world terms) Tharp technique had become astonishing, even miraculous to behold.

Sweet Dreams, the evening's opening work, is set to Shaker hymns, including new arrangements of traditional music as well as work by such composers as William Billings, the so-called "American Primitive" who was well-known in the second half of the 18th century, and others. Most of the songs are for a male-only or female-only a cappella chorale, reflecting the Shaker belief in segregation of the sexes, and Tharp divides up her dancers in the same way.

For the most part, Tharp also restricts the ensemble to a reverential, even prayerful movement. They repeatedly reach outward from the center of their bodies, gracefully unfolding the arm in a gesture that leaves the palm up and open. But the phrase becomes as relentless as the music, whose tempo and texture vary only slightly; indeed, the monotonous lighting design—dim and dimmer—helps the 30-minute piece devolve into a visual and aural drone.

The evening's second work, 66, displays Tharp's signature appetite for an impressive variety of musical styles—she has set dances to classical compositions, to Frank Sinatra love songs, to original scores by David Byrne, and to practically everything in between. She calls the sound collage for 66 "lounge and bachelor pad" music, and that's as good a description as any. It's an amazing assemblage of Muzak, bossa nova, big band, and smarmy instrumentals played on everything from the harpsichord to the marimba—plus one vocal: a recording of Dean Martin singing Ain't That A Kick in the Head?.

The best work of the evening, 66 shows off enough of the famous Tharp humor to make one nostalgic (two huge auto tires—one on toe and one in jazz flats—wander through the piece like the famous highway of the title). It's also got some terrific dancing. Shawn Mahoney, as a rickety old man in jeans and suspenders, throws away his cane and transforms himself into a dancin' fool, with all the loose-limbed, "aw, shucks" flair of a Gene Kelly.

Tharp gives The Couple (Julie Stahl and Andrew Robinson) some pretty great duets, too, and their breakups and make ups, which are the through-line of 66, show the brilliance and sexiness Tharp can bring to heterosexual partnering (in one section, Robinson lifts Stahl, winding her around his body, then cradles and throws her—all while positioned on his knees).

Tharp! ends with Heroes, set to a Philip Glass symphony reportedly inspired by the music of David Bowie and Brian Eno. One sensed that Tharp was trying in Heroes to tap the same avalanche of movement and energy that characterize older pieces like The Catherine Wheel and Fait Accompli, but the attempt never gelled. One understands that Heroes is about conflict and lots of it. Beyond that, it's a little opaque.

Glass's score, however, is fascinating. It's a more melodic and harmonically interesting Glass than perhaps ever before—even if he does throw in one of his staler tricks, an ear-splitting, clangorous crescendo that's a signal to anyone whose attention has wandered that the end of the composition is near.

Oddly, it isn't until those final moments that Tharp seems even to notice the score (taking her cue from the sudden, crashing end of the music, she closes Heroes with an equally abrupt tableau). Otherwise, the music and the movement wander through Heroes like two lanes of the same highway. With Tharp at the wheel, one hoped for so much more.