By Rita Felciano

SCOTT WELLS IS infuriatingly irresistible. For the past 10 years he has raided the sports channels to find the intersection of dance and athletics. While the two do not exactly engage each other on Wells's playing field, they come close enough to set off sparks of excitement. What Wells doesn't do is give sufficient shape and structure to the quasi-encounters. There is juxtaposition and coexistence, but not enough interaction. Moments of great intensity – the sheer beauty of the performers' physical expression and the instances of exceptional wit and vulnerability – give way to stretches that go nowhere. If athletes and dancers share the same universe, Wells has to show us how and why.

A case in point is the new, fetchingly titled Rocky vs. Baryshnikov, which pairs two boxers (Michael Ehrlich and Mahran Shakhar) with three dancers (Melecio Estrella, Gabriel Forestieri, and Wells). Performance artist Angus Balbernie acts as a sharp-tongued referee who might have been hit on the head one too many times.

The piece begins by setting up oppositions. After a blackout, Ehrlich's lightly whipping weight-shifts and staccato shadowboxing segue into Wells's rolling and gravity-embracing lunges and dives. A quick-footed boxing duet between Ehrlich and Shakhar is shadowed by Estrella and Forestieri's close-body partnering – a series of languid lifts and suspensions. No doubt Wells means to highlight two types of interaction that demand quick timing and vibrant presence: one based on avoidance and aggression, the other on sustained physical contact and support. A good idea, but Wells could do more with it. The highlight occurs when Estrella and Forestieri's playful give-and-take turns into a tangled wrestling match.

But attempts to bring the boxers into choreographic territory – for instance, having them engage each other with open hands and in slow motion – look wan and feeble. And in a mixed duet, Forestieri's lightning-fast boxing move easily outshines the boxers' – surely it isn't Wells's intent to show that the dancer is potentially the better boxer.

The rest of the program has already been presented in one form or another. Wells has a tendency to showcase works in progress and then endlessly tinker with them. He does impose some structure (creating unisons, sequential entrances, and parallel motions), but too often it remains on an elementary level. He doesn't seem interested in shooting for a trajectory that would formally and philosophically elevate his material. His pieces remain a series of vignettes.

But what vignettes! Recess is full of them. After a silly start – who needs to see playground chasing games, unless they are shaped into something telling? – Wells's wondrous dancer-athletes (Jennifer Chien, Melanie Elms, Estrella, Forestieri, Yayoi Kambara, and Frieda Kipar) work toward a series of often breathtaking encounters. Partners flip one another over their backs and twirl over one another's heads. They solemnly roll in from opposite wings, and wrestling moves share the stage with coy arabesques. They leap at one another, only to be caught or to knock a partner into a new orbit; tiny but tough Kipar throws herself at Estrella with the force of an unstoppable projectile.