Also this issue: Designer Threads The PMA and the art of installation. -Robin Rice Bryan Willette -Susan Hagen Forbidden Broadway -Debra Auspitz Beauty and the Beast -Debra Auspitz The Consul -David Shengold Paul Taylor Dance Co. -Debra Auspitz John Simpson and Jesse Sheidlower of the OED -Juliet Fletcher Artsbeat -Debra Auspitz

December 5-11, 2002

artpicks

CityDance Ensemble

by Janet Anderson

Just six years old, CityDance Ensemble of D.C. is a new kid on the dance block. But it's already prime property, having been selected this year by Dance Magazine as one of the "Top 25 to Watch." Not bad for a troupe whose artistic director's former experience was as a defense analyst on Capitol Hill, and who took his first dance lesson wearing Dockers. CityDance is more than an 18-member dance company. It also boasts a live music unit with a resident composer, and a film component. Plus they do good works through the Early Arts Program, aimed at school kids. But you aren't going to want to see CityDance at Painted Bride this weekend because they've got a model program. You want to see them because they can dance! Eclectic modern best describes their movement idiom. Nevertheless, artist-in-residence Rasta Thomas is a ballet phenom with links to the great Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg, Russia, plus a Varna Gold Medal (ballet's international competition). But don't look for toe shoes. Instead, expect to see dancers tumbling like waves in artistic director Paul Emerson's "Falling Into the Sea," evoking a "Chinook" wind while performing to company musicians keeping the beat on wine bottles and vases, or even looking like they've slipped off a Greek vase to partake in a line dance set to eerie sounds of a Bulgarian women's choir. Maybe CityDance can start a movement in Washington: Make dance, not war.

Thu.-Sat., Dec. 5-7, 8 p.m., $10-$20, The Painted Bride Arts Center, 230 Vine St., 215-925-9914.