"Avatard" at Community Education Center

Gamers don't know much about geography. Outer space invades their consciousness, but inner space is where they live. Physically, they don't wander much more than 10 feet from their dude caves; mentally, no further than the commands on a TV screen.

On Friday night, the droll choreographer Megan Mazarick took only one hour to paint this portrait of three gaming guys in her show, Avatard. That was all she needed to please the filled-to-the-rafters crowd at West Philly's Community Education Center. Mazarick had reconfigured the performance space to free up some of the stands for dancing, and the only place to put the rest of the audience was up.

Her title - a portmanteau blending avatar and, well, let's say slow-witted - made delicious sport of the dopey but endearing gamers (Brad Ellis, "Brad"; John Peery, "John"; and Jumatatu Poe, "Tuma") in deep thrall to their games. Mazarick used music from Star Trek and World of Warcraft. These game-worlds have replaced the comic books of earlier eras - think Tales from the Crypt combined with extreme fighting. They can be ugly, mindless, and violent, but Mazarick's danced game is cute, cerebral, even gentle - her white "spacemen" cuddly as bunnies.

Mazarick, as Tetris, ruler of the planet Klygon, and Alex Holmes, as Soulburner, war captain of the planet, dance behind a scrim as the guys manipulate them with their controllers. Their movement is choppy and discontinuous, hilariously nonthreatening. For them, costumer Danielle Marie Tobin created a Club Risque/Home Depot couture of black pleather and foam tubing.

Eventually Tetris and Soulburner control the gamers, luring them behind the screen as even sillier avatars of themselves. Brad is a howl in a black, bolero-style hoodie with a pink tasseled cockscomb on his head and the same tassels dangling from his wrists. Tuma, in a black head cover, glides squatting across the stage as a sinister and shifty Crab King, his long arms clawing the air.

Video-game jargon is projected on the scrim, and when the key icon to the exit appears, all hands touch it. The "crew" members reappear in space suits and helmets, taking to the empty stands, where they float slo-mo into oblivion. If these dancers were teaching at Video Game Camp, I'd pack my backpack and wait for the bus - virtually speaking, that is.