CHATHAM — TAKE Dance Company started out as a vehicle for choreographer Takehiro Ueyama to express his dancerly visions. But as seen on Friday night at the Tent at PS/21, Ueyama is opening up his four-year-old troupe to other dancemakers.

That’s a mixed blessing. Works by other choreographers gives greater depth and texture to a TAKE concert. Then again, Ueyama is staking his name and reputation on the abilities of others. The latter is a concern as Ueyama has an excellent reputation as a sensitive artist. A former Paul Taylor dancer, the native of Tokyo combines eastern and western art forms to good effect. Yet strangely, it was his newest work that came off as underdeveloped.

The program opened with Ueyama’s “Looking for Water,” a piece he toiled on while at PS/21 last summer. Created for a septet of dancers, “Looking for Water” draws its impulse from the percussive and airy music of Damian Eckstein. The dancers wave their arms and raise three fingers that slide down their faces and sternums. The motif is often repeated in this languid dance. At one point the dance turns frenetic, but it quickly slows again.

The look of the dance, all in white, is clinical and ritualistic. But “Looking for Water” does little more than tread water, leaving the audience thirsting for something more satisfying.

Ueyama’s “Linked,” to music by Pat Metheny, makes up for it. This is a bright, explosive tour-de-force for eight, including Ueyama. The driving jazz rhythms propels the dancers across the stage like fireworks.

Dressed in cargo pants, tank tops and Ts, they jump about, wiggling their bottoms in mid-air, slide across the floor and spiral like tornados. When so much about the art of dance trends toward the dark and dysfunctional, “Linked” is a refreshing departure.

The program also features a world premiere by Jill Echo, Ueyama’s assistant director. The atmospheric “Left There by the Tide,” with music by Philip Glass, Graeme Revell, Lukas Foss and Eckstein, captures the vastness and power of the ocean’s tide. The dancers are the waves, balled up and rolling on and off the stage. They are also the plant life on the shore and under the sea as they undulate from head to toe.

Yet “Left There by the Tide” is not a monotone thumping of waves against the sand. These waters collide with immovable objects resulting in a violent clash of titans. Sharon Park slams into the granite-like stillness of Kile Hotchkiss in a dramatic battle of will. As she flings herself at him, he remains planted. They finally end with her limbs wrapped around his torso, resigned to going around rather than through.

Obviously, Echo is a choreographer Ueyama would be wise to nurture. I’m not so sure the same could be said for Asun Noales. Her solo for Ueyama, “Huella” (Spanish for footprint), initially captures the imagination and then goes nowhere.

Ueyama is a mighty dancer, however. His frame commands the stage. In “Huella,” he looks like he is making up the dance as he goes along. The dance is organic to the dancer but hardly interesting to the audience.