The Thinking Person’s Folk Troupe

America has always looked at international folk dance through rose-colored glasses, replacing each pair periodically with a new but equally distorting set of spectacles.

In the ‘50s, folk dance was touted as an opportunity to view the quaint ways of our brothers and sisters in other lands. In the ‘60s--heyday of the recreational folk dance movement--peasants were sympathetic, downtrodden folks whose music you could pick out on the guitar. And in the style-conscious ‘80s, audiences are dazzled by the sheer visual spectacle supplied by the big state-supported folk dance companies.

But all those colorful costumes and happy smiles are really beside the point, according to Anthony Shay, artistic director of Los Angeles-based AVAZ International Dance Theatre.

“I find myself pulling away from what I call a presentational style of dance,” Shay said shortly before the company’s spring tour, which includes three performances--next Sunday, April 15 and 16--at John Marshall High School in Los Feliz.

“When I was young, we all saw Moiseyev and, I mean, wow! That kind of overwhelming theatrical experience took everybody by the throat. But as time has gone by, I find what Moiseyev does feels like an extension of the tourist bureau. . . . The more I see it traipsing through here, the more I want to avoid it.

“We want to be a thinking-man’s or -woman’s dance company. Quaintness is what we’re trying to avoid. . . . I want to draw the audience into something besides the steps and movement. The most important thing is being believable as a person from that time and place to someone from the area. That kind of authority is a very important element of what we do.”

And how does a company of Americans muster that authority? “Research, research and more research,” said Shay, an affable, comfortably rounded man in his early 50s. “In folklore there’s always a surprise, something to come along and make you wonderfully ignorant again.”

A librarian by profession (by day, he staffs North Hollywood’s Valley Plaza branch), Shay holds master’s degrees in folklore and mythology, anthropology, and Persian literature and language from UCLA, Cal State L.A. and the University of Tehran in Iran. His personal library of folklore materials, amassed over the past 35 years, is one of AVAZ’s major resources.

Still, Shay believes there are limits to what American dancers truthfully can represent. His 55-member company of dancers, singers and musicians--which specializes in works from Asia, the Middle East, the Balkans, North Africa and the Americas--avoids certain markedly passionate dance styles such as tango and flamenco.

Just as “coral is beautiful underwater, but when you pull it out it looks gray,” Shay said, such dances lack authority when removed from their stylized nightclub ambiance.

“ ‘Soul’ is an elusive element,” he admitted, “but if I don’t see it in the materials we do, then we’re not doing the right material. The object is to pick works that complement their (the performers’) soul. My dancers and musicians are responding increasingly to more austere and stark kinds of folklore.”

AVAZ strives to evoke the “elegance and strength” of dance in traditional societies, in which men and women meet on specific formal occasions and take great pains to keep their demeanor in line with their community’s expectations.

“When I put together a program,” Shay said, “I construct a total theater experience with costumes that have distinctive silhouettes and music that has distinctive sounds--which may be unfamiliar at first, even unpleasant, but which shows the breadth of world folklore.”

That total experience inevitably includes dances from some of the world’s hot spots, however, which occasionally makes presenters nervous. At one recent performance, Shay said, he was asked to omit work from Iran.

He refused, choosing instead to explain to the audience that AVAZ’s presentation of a dance from a particular region “is not an endorsement of their politics. We represent a (culture) on another level of (its) existence, letting you see these people as people, not as stereotypes.” The audience applauded, and the presenter relaxed.

These days, Shay seems pretty relaxed too. After 11 1/2 years on an often precarious administrative footing, AVAZ now boasts an operating budget about to pass the $100,000 mark, a $10,000 grant for touring from the National Endowment for the Arts, and promised gigs that stretch 1 1/2 years into the future.

Something else is new too: Incoming company members now tend to come from the worlds of modern dance or ballet rather than the thinning ranks of young recreational folk dancers.

“Folklore is something people can do after their ballet or modern career is over,” Shay observed. In any case, modern dance strikes him as “wildly oversubscribed,” with “more dancers than companies to accommodate them. If you’re a presenter and you have to fill a house with 2,000 seats . . . it’s unlikely you’ll pick new, untried names.

“Whereas folk dancers don’t depend on name recognition. Our audience is made up of people who’ve become devotees of PBS and who want to know more about their world. We’re really an extension of that kind of programming.”