DANCE REVIEWS : ‘The Ted Shawn Legacy’ at UC Riverside

In front of a projected black-and-white silent film from the 1930s of the late Ted Shawn and his company, nine male dancers line up to chant the words used about them in their profession--beginning with the three-letter epithet for “homosexual.”

In the next two hours, these men will accept, explore and transcend all the descriptions, including the terms of hate, in a program that adds up to a critique of American machismo as much as a tribute to the father of American modern dance a century after his birth.

Originally presented in 1991, “Jacob’s Pillow’s Men Dancers: The Ted Shawn Legacy” came to UC Riverside on Thursday two months before the end of an international tour. In form, it compiled male choreographic achievement from modern dance pioneers Shawn (“Kinetic Molpai”) and Jose Limon (“The Unsung”) up through contemporary icons such as Garth Fagan (“Oatka Trail”), the men of Pilobolus (“Ocellus”) and the firebrands of a new generation.

Artistic director Robby Barnett is obviously fearless: He takes the audience directly from the spirituality of Shawn’s quasi-ethnic 1949 solo “The Mevlevi Dervish,” with its skirtlike costume, to another vision of men in skirts: Rick Darnell’s outrageous 1990 “Brides of Frankenstein,” in which most of the six dancers are naked under short, crushed tutus.

Darnell clearly wants to savage the cliches of effeminacy in dances requiring so much speed and stamina that only Olympic-caliber jocks could survive them. Duets by Demetrius A. Klein (“The Garden Alone”) and Stephen Petronio (“Surrender II”) also adopt athleticism defensively, as if no man has the right to express intimate feelings on a stage unless he first presses twice his own weight overhead.

Splendidly performed and inventively framed by new Ann Carlson contextual pieces, the program proves enlightening from both an artistic and a historical perspective. It also raises questions about pervasive American definitions of masculinity that currently bedevil Congress, the military and our new President as well as any guy who just wants to spend his life moving to music.

“Jacob’s Pillow’s Men Dancers: The Ted Shawn Legacy” appears at UC Santa Barbara on Feb. 16 and 17.