Built by Association

Youri Nelzine represents the changing face of Aman.

In one evening with the troupe, he’ll perform folk dances from the British Isles, Turkey, Mexico and South Africa, returning home with rousing foot rhythms from Appalachia.

None of these countries is really home to Nelzine, however. He moved here two years ago from the former Soviet republic of Moldova and isn’t a citizen yet, but his new son, Kevin Konstantin, is. In other words, he’s living a typical American experience, just the one Aman wants to embrace.

The 34-year-old, Los Angeles-based company, though still devoted to authentic replication, is increasingly interested in how folk music and dance forms brought here from around the globe mingle, evolve and meld or stay the same.

“We’re focusing on American culture and the influence the world has had on American culture over the generations and today,” said Vic Koler, music director for the troupe, which will appear at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on May 21 during the 13th annual Imagination Celebration.

The 16-day youth arts festival, staged around the U.S. and sponsored locally by the center and the Orange County Department of Education, will bring about 60 (most of them free) arts events to about 30 sites and all 27 school districts beginning Saturday. Sixty organizations, including leading county arts groups, will take part.

Conceived by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, the Imagination Celebration aims to make the arts a vital part of children’s lives. On May 22, 6,000 area students are expected to be bused to the center to see Aman, whose new focus mirrors this year’s festival theme: “Arts in Harmony.”

“Aman shows cultural harmony through music and dance,” said Troy Botello, the center’s education director. Noting local schools’ vast ethnic mix, he added, “I don’t think children realize that their [respective] cultures have their own dance and music forms.”

For their performances here, Aman’s players will make music from Britain with a penny whistle, from the Middle East with a stringed oud and from the Caribbean with a percussive cajon.

Its 30 dancers will balance wine-filled carafes atop their heads for a Hungarian harvest celebration, slap boots for a South African miners dance and cross swords for a dazzling British sleight of hand and foot.

“Russian Spoon Dance,” another Old World work, will feature Nelzine, as will “Dances of Rhythm,” which best represents the troupe’s new direction, officials said during recent phone interviews. Staged by dance director Rosina Didyk, the piece shows how Appalachian clogging evolved from Irish step dancing through exposure to Native Americans, West Africans, French, Irish and English as it traveled south from Cape Breton, Canada. It also shows how the thriving, distinctly American dance continues to evolve.

“It’s a totally contemporary form, meaning you can make up your own steps or take a step and add to it, or experiment with sounds and rhythms,” Didyk said. “At the end, we do really modern choreography, more like what you’d see today.”

“Dances of Rhythm,” Aman’s newest piece, is part of “The Immigrants,” a major work in progress that, as envisioned, will weave together music and dance from around the world, vintage film clips and recorded testimonials from company members about their own immigrant experience.

“It’s our story, our American story,” said executive director Romalyn Tilghman, “and it will allow audiences to really explore their own heritage, learn about other peoples’ and understand the richness of the multicultural country we live in apart from any political considerations.”

Audiences won’t be learning anything from Aman, however, if it doesn’t conquer serious financial woes caused by nationwide cutbacks in arts funding, not to mention artistic, morale and management troubles, Tilghman said.

The ensemble, which adds freelancers to its nine core members for non-school shows, has long received support from the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, which sent $48,000 last year. Through sponsorship from the Los Angeles Music Center and the Orange County Performing Arts Center, it has staged 200 school shows annually throughout the Southland for the past decade.

“We’re blessed to have Aman, with the national recognition they have,” said the center’s Botello. “And they really go all-out for the school shows.”

But the group only recently staged its first full-scale performance in Southern California in two years, and it continues to suffer from a 2-year-old deficit, now about $50,000, a sixth of its operating budget.

Still, optimism remains high, particularly with a new mission and “The Immigrants,” its first evening-length work, for inspiration, Tilghman said.

“We feel we’re on the brink of doing a really incredible piece,” she said. “The story we’ll be telling goes back to the Native Americans who came across the Bering Strait. I think it’s a perfect project for the turn of the millennium.”

BE THERE

Aman International Music and Dance Company, Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. May 22, 8 p.m. (714) 556-2122. $8. Part of the Imagination Celebration, Saturday-May 24, taking place throughout Orange County.