DANCE REVIEWS : Aman Folk Ensemble Returns to L.A. Area

The Aman International Folk Ensemble opened its 29th season Saturday in Beckman Auditorium, Caltech, the company’s first major performance in the Los Angeles area in two years.

Since the company’s last local appearance, world events have made some its most familiar suites doubly potent, showing us rich traditions now at the center of war zones. Classical elegance from Uzbekistan, intricate folk vitality from Croatia--the old splendor carries a new sadness.

Eastern Turkey has become increasingly embattled in the wake of the Gulf War, but Aman’s impressive new suite of men’s dances from Bingol emphasizes social solidarity through tight geometric formations, sharp unisons and even communal virtuosity (the exit step for the eight-dancer chain is a hop on one foot, with the other leg hooked over the arm of the man next in line).

Choreographer Ahmet Luleci sustains kinetic excitement both here and in his Black Sea Coast dances with always forceful, increasingly complex group statements: head wags, shoulder shakes and arm swings over hopping steps punctuated by kicks in the woman’s septet; accelerating squat drops, bounce- and skip-steps plus plenty of sudden-death changes of direction in the men’s trio. Accompaniment ranges from a single fiddle to an ensemble of winds, drum, lutelike instruments and voice.

Other highlights on the program include Don Sparks’ men’s trio from Mehkerek, where Romanian culture survives within the borders of Hungary. Sparks, Istvan Szabo and Robert Fox each have unaccompanied solos of superbly twisty, spontaneous, boot-slapping bravura.

Romanian music proves equally amazing when Stuart Brotman coaxes surprising filligree from the tilinca , a long wooden tube with a single finger-hole.

A major part of the evening shows European traditions transformed by New World cultures. For instance, Gayle Armstrong’s suite of social dances from Mexico, “Fiesta Nortena,” shows us Latino style embroidering the polka. Yves Moreau and France Bourque-Moreau’s French-Canadian rural dances spotlight the translation and enhancement of British source-dances. Finally Jerry Duke’s Appalachia suite incorporates a number of cultural influences absorbed into that region’s folklore.

Providing spoken annotations, as well as singing and dancing with the members of his company, artistic director Barry Glass celebrated a quarter-century with Aman at this performance.