DANCE REVIEW : A Sharp ‘Black Choreographers’ Festival for ’93

After a 1992 descent into glamorous narcissism, an indispensable new edition of the annual “Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century” festival arrived at the Japan America Theatre on Thursday, as sharp and uncompromising as you could wish.

The program repeats tonight, offering local audiences another opportunity to sample four pieces similar only in being unpredictable.

In “Ring-a-Levio,” African-American dance master Donald McKayle depicted sex war through both the structure of a children’s game and the violent power struggles of contemporary street gangs.

In “Drastic Cuts: Part One,” postmodern maverick Donald Byrd tore into some of the thorniest achievements of George Balanchine’s ballet-modernism and extended that tradition in daring showcases for drop-dead barefoot virtuosi.

Both Winifred R. Harris’ “When Wet Came to Paper” and Shakiri’s “With My Face on Their Face” depicted processes of survival and of mourning, each using texts to honor those lost along the way. But where Harris made text a point of departure, veteran Bay Area choreographer Shakiri kept it the central element in a tough, political theater-piece about the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Sometimes Shakiri used the spoken word to confront the audience or to quote from documentary sources: the sound-bites from radio coverage of the riots, for instance. But her most inspired use of speech came in character solos where she fused it with movement brilliantly.

Think of taking a person’s verbal style--especially his or her speech rhythms and sense of attack--and making that style pulse through the body, shaking the torso and lifting the limbs. That’s what Shakiri accomplished in her talking-dances.

Only one passage in “With My Face on Their Face” achieved independent movement interest but it, too, proved stunning: Celisse Greer Johnson slowly crossing the stage and changing shape with every step--growing harder, rounder, softer, more angular, more liquid, thinner, taller, older. Unforgettable.

Based locally, Harris turned out to be the discovery of the evening: a choreographer with an intriguing hybrid style that looked strongest in its inventive development of Africanisms but especially in its exciting pull or drive through the spine. No matter how asymmetrically deployed, her dancers always seemed in balance, connected to the floor and growing from it up into the light.

“When Wet Came to Paper” adroitly contrasted individual and group movement, developed emotion out of gesture without weakening the powerful dance impulse sustaining the piece and even managed to heighten an overload of sterile, pointed-toe extensions through unexpected tilts, twists and torso actions.

Finally, Harris deliberately undercut her music at the end with closing images that left the future as uncertain for the suffering community she had depicted as for all of us.

McKayle, a dance professor at UC Irvine, also took a gamble regarding music, choosing to set his gang warfare against the insinuating melodies of tango master Astor Piazzolla rather than the obvious MTV rock rampages. He also worked successfully to abandon a meticulously crafted modern-dance style that has served him through a distinguished career. Instead, welcome a Donald McKayle who savors the abrupt, the rough-edged, the dangerous.

Unfortunately, the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble of Denver couldn’t dance “Ring-a-Levio” with nearly enough threat to make McKayle’s group passages properly intimidating: The doomed lovers (Karah Abiog and Gary Lewis) simply exuded more power than their would-be oppressors.

However, the piece held up through its disturbing concept of gang style as a mask for consuming gender hatred. McKayle showed us sexual predators hunting in packs, with anyone foolish enough to act out of individual need destined to be manipulated, terrorized--or worse. The image lingers, even after an inadequate performance.

Previously reviewed in these pages, Donald Byrd’s “Drastic Cuts: Part One” ended the program with an astonishing display of furious energy and almost smug technical exactitude. Like McKayle, Byrd divided his company into sex squads, and he, too, found plenty of aggression in their interplay. Not exactly comforting to think about, of course, but sheer dynamite to see.