About two-thirds of the way through Tamar Rogoff’s “Edith and Jenny,” an adolescent exercise about exercising adolescents, Claire Danes finally delivers some text. Since most of the audience knows Ms. Danes as an actress from film (“Shopgirl”) or television (“My So Called Life”) rather than as a modern dancer, it should have been a welcome relief. Instead, a nervous titter rippled through the audience as she gamely shouted,”Your Mama’s got a date tonight!” and hopped up and down like an irritated bird. And there was no going back.

Inspired by a rediscovered friendship between childhood chums Ms. Danes and Ariel Rogoff Flavin (Ms. Rogoff’s daughter), “Edith and Jenny” is meant to eulogize their young selves and celebrate their maturity. Two Jeffrey Mueller movies, made when the performers were preteens, play behind them, making the work into a quartet between the women dancing and the girls acting. And the acting, surprisingly, stands up rather well. Though the films are clumsy, it’s clear that both 11-year-olds are comfortable in front of a camera. In the theater, these years later, that comfort has somehow evaporated. Perhaps it’s that they have so little to do; Ms. Rogoff only permits them the most hackneyed gestures (karate kicks, jagged elbows) to fill the time between their half-dozen costume changes.

And Ms. Rogoff’s storytelling is hardly subtle: Lip-synching to “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” while joined at the hip by a Siamesetwin costume hammers home early intimacy. Side-by-side cancan kicks emphasize the girls’ eventual estrangement. Later, each wears her own individual walkman — maybe because each was moving to her own drummer? The symbolism falls like a lead hammer.

The women do have a lovely easiness with each other — if not with us — folding their bodies together like kittens in a pile. When they spoon to watch their films (on a chaise they laboriously drag into the center), Ms. Danes scratches Ms. Rogoff Flavin’s leg companionably. And despite her miniature frame, Ms. Danes is prodigiously strong—half her time is spent dragging or lifting her friend across the stage. But as dancers, the women are illmatched. Much is made of Ms. Danes’s supple back in an endless series of inchworm wriggles, but Ms. Rogoff Flavin can’t match her.

But neither woman should be faulted for the evening’s shortcomings. Ms. Rogoff’s choreography bears the blame, as well as her astonishingly undramatic pace. Asad inability to negotiate between media and Ms. Rogoff’s uninspired vocabulary has torpedoed a sweetly intended effort.

Ms. Danes’s star power is welcome in dance, and it’s pleasant to be reminded that friendships can be refound. But surely we were meant to see these women not solely with the sophistication of their 11-year-old selves.

Until February 4 (150 First Ave. at East 9th Street, 212-477-5288).