DANCE REVIEW : Multiple Dimensions Explored in High-Speed African Dance Concert

African ethnic dance takes on an added dimension in Dimensions Dance Theater concerts, as local aficionados discovered this weekend.

For its single-performance concert Friday at Mandeville Auditorium, the Oakland-based troupe dished out a raucous blend that mixed the relentless rhythms of traditional African movement with contemporary jazz and even a smattering of modern dance. The accent was on energy and speed. The result was a rafter-raiser in the Alvin Ailey tradition.

The dancers (seven women and two men) are all dynamos who operate in only one gear--high. And they never seemed to run out of gas despite the demands of the company’s nonstop choreography.

Artistic director Deborah Vaughan has several theatrical adaptations of pure African danceworks in her repertory, and four were featured in the program.

“Linjin and Wolosodon,” a dance taken from a traditional West African morality play/ballet, was the fever-pitched finale for the first half of the program. Act II consisted of a three-piece South African suite that explored life among the Zulus and the Bacas.

Dimensions Dance Theater started the evening off with a pulsating hybrid designed by its director. Titled “Chasing/Rap-Zo-Dee,” this exuberant ensemble piece dispersed the company in staccato bursts, while the fascinating rhythms of percussionist Ghasem Batamuntu’s score egged them on.

The dancers wore hot jungle colors, which looked even hotter under the steamy lighting designs. Although the ensemble was on stage as a group much of the time, there was very little unison work. Each dancer popped up independently for some eccentric configurations--head isolations, shoulder spins, torso twists, and the like--then bounced off-stage only to reappear in a different grouping.

Anisa Rasheed and Gina Dawson teamed up for an exciting duet. But when Michael McElvane and LaTanya Johnson paired off for their soulful twosome, the violent sonics slowed down. And the couple slithered through its sinewy moves, while the trombone (played by Charles Hamilton) whined and blared its harsh accompaniment.

Rasheed, a dancer with the company since 1979, contributed a piece of her own. “Male/Female,” created in 1988, used Ailey images and angst-filled moves to tell the story of a marriage, and the male’s subsequent desertion.

McElvane was controlled and powerful in his bare-chested solo, slicing through space with slow, deliberate moves that never seemed forced. But the trio for Laura Elaine Ellis, Rasheed, and Johnson, juxtaposed against a woman’s sobbing, was too steeped in stereotypes to be truly effective.

The lightest work on the program was “Amatshe” (The Can Dance), a playful piece based on a game invented by Zulu and Sotho women.

“Isicathulo” (The Boot Dance) is a foot-stomping dance made all the clumsier by the big rubber boots on the dancers’ feet. It was noisy, upbeat and infectious.

“Ayi Hlome” (Let the Warriors Arm), sent the near-capacity crowd home cheering.

It was danced with vigor and conviction by the full company. But with only two men to engage in combat, the dance fell short of its potential, even though both McElvane and I. Vincent McGinnis gave it everything they had.

The seven women shimmied and shook, and filled the stage to bursting with their frenzied moves, and Dawson was a mesmerizing presence as the medicine woman.

Four virtuoso percussionists (including Batamuntu) did the honors on the African drums for the traditional tribal danceworks, and stole the show on their own in a dazzling display of rhythmic vitality in the first act.