DANCE REVIEW : Aman Ensemble in Glendale

Nothing new on the bill, but Sunday at Glendale High School, the Aman folk ensemble presented familiar suites of mostly Balkan and American music and dance with freshness and exuberance, as well as the company’s usual authority.

Uniformly excellent performances heightened dynamic and stylistic contrasts within and among the works. In an unaccompanied Bosnian dance the men’s thunderous stomping plays off the delicacy of the women’s almost silent footfall and jingling coin necklaces. In the Romanian purtata, the women’s soft heel-clicking and foot-slapping serves as a prelude to the weight and mass of the men’s version of the same movement.

After the energetic jumping of the East European dances, eight women gliding evenly beneath the Azerbaijan canopy seemed to embody Asian serenity and an irresistible horizontal impetus.

For the most part the staging conveyed a social context for the material, with instrumentalists casually clustered at one side and dancers and singers strolling or dancing on- and off-stage with the ease of participants in a village festival. Except for the very mannered Russian quadrille, the company held theatricality firmly in check.

Outstanding individual performances included Robyn Friend’s sinuous Turkish asik song, Stuart Brotman’s haunting tilinca flute and Bessarabian hammered dulcimer solos and Barry Glass’s creditable Cajun zydeco song.