This weekend’s performances by the Alvin Ailey troupe demonstrated the pitfalls of pursuing accessibility with works danced to the most rhythmically primitive popular music. Nowhere was this more evident than in “Shining Star,” choreographed by David Parsons in 2004 to a medley of Earth, Wind and Fire’s 1970s classics.

The pounding, insistent rhythms used in the piece are so contagious that on Friday night I was tempted to start bouncing around in my seat. Wonderful as the Ailey dancers are, watching them strut to the strains of my favorite EWF song, “September,” didn’t seem quite as fun as catching it on the radio in my apartment and dancing to it myself. The company has never been averse to a certain degree of audience participation, but when I’m sitting in a theater, I’d prefer to see something so absorbing that all my concentration goes into spectating.

It doesn’t look like Mr. Parsons had his heart in it; “Shining Star” really could have been choreographed by Paula Abdul. Much of it was unadulterated boogie, and even at its most difficult it seemed straight out of an MTV awards show. The dancing on music videos is very accomplished, as far as it goes, but the choreography provided there never explores the full range of a trained dancer’s capacities: The attack and energy are unvaried and unmodulated.

Occasionally during “Shining Star,” the Ailey dancers would get to demonstrate a more cultured arabesque than you would usually encounter on the TV screen. Only then would you realize that this was actually concert dance. But the most enjoyable part of “Shining Star” was the choreographed curtain calls that were performed as the EWF continued to blare and the dancers tumbled to the ground in irresistibly silly pratfalls.

Judith Jamison’s “Love Songs,” which was performed at the Saturday matinee, suffers to some degree from the same banality as “Shining Star,” but is a more complicated statement. Ms. Jamison was so closely associated with Ailey that anything she does acquires the import of a message channeled from the company founder himself. Here she willingly posits herself as a keeper of the flame: The backdrop for part of the dance is a printed statement from Ailey about his goals for the company.

“Love Songs” begins with a solo by Glenn Allen Sims, in which he alternates between balletically turned-out stances and the more earthy orientation of classic modern dance. It then turns into a self-portrait of a dance company, as the dancers assemble onstage and emphatically act like “themselves,” – as in dancers warming up – and then coast into an impromptu workout that goes through different permutations but is dominated by long stretches of hip-hop bacchanal that also turn monotonous.

The program lists Robert Battle and Rennie Harris as co-choreographers for “Love Songs,” and Ms. Jamison perhaps functioned as project director more than anything. It may be that Ms. Jamison’s own voice – closer to Ailey’s own lexicon – is more precisely exhibited in this season’s premiere, “Reminiscin’,” where she receives sole choreographic credit. But what’s most attractive about “Love Songs” is its very untidiness. It doesn’t strive for an integrated homo geneity and never attempts to disguise that it is the work of several individuals. The soundtrack is a melange encompassing Stevie Wonder (early and mature), dungeon clanks, and other assaultive effects. The different episodes are just as heterogeneous.

More concentrated was Ulysses Dove’s “Vespers,” which was performed both Friday night and at the Saturday matinee. “Vespers” is one of those chair ballets that were popular in the 1980s, in which pieces of furniture became props and catalysts. Here, though, the chairs are a battlefield.

The dance begins with a woman standing alone in a cone of light. A second woman appears soon after and pulls the chair right out from under her. They butt chests and the interloper withdraws. The chair’s original inhabitant reclaims sole possession of a chair that has now acquired the status of a kind of throne.

The lights go out and when they come back on, chairs are lined up single file on the right side of the stage. Six women stand like sentinels in front of them. Each woman walks in her own characterized way over to a thicket of chairs assembled across the stage. Taut with repressed energy, the women alternate between sitting straight-backed in their straight-back chairs and freaking out from the apparent strain of acting like perfect little “ladies,” – among other complaints they may be harboring. Cryptic gestures continue the combat theme introduced in the first section.

The piece’s demented air makes for gripping dance theater. The polyrhythmic soundtrack is white-knuckle fast and edgy. Unlike “Shining Star” and “Love Songs,” audience members are not encouraged to believe that they could slide into the onstage world and move the way these dancers do.

Friday night also saw Hans van Manen’s 1997 work “Solo” receive its Ailey company premiere. It was immediately clear that so ostentatious a proclamation of genericism as is the title of this piece is only a red herring: The piece is made for three men. They perform “basic” movement like walks and runs, with some ballet thrown in as well as the modern-dance equivalent of traveling steps like glissades. There are frequent interjections of shrugs and moues, among other incongruous gestures; incongruous too was the Bach score, which contributed to the tone of calculated non-sequitor. They abruptly walk away cold from what they are doing, a la Forsythe, or arrive onstage with an impervious nose in the air and then start moving frenetically. The three dancers were Clifton Brown, Matthew Rushing, and Mr. Sims, and they were impish cut-ups, like urban commedia figures. “Solo” is fine as long as it stays cute – and mildly irritating when it becomes cutesy.

The Alvin Ailey repertory season runs until January 1 at City Center (131 W. 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, 212-581-1212).