December 15-21, 2005

dance

Proof Positive

Ronald K. Brown calls his dance company Evidence, referencing his debt to ancestors. Probably no one else working in modern dance has synthesized so much into one coherent dance technique. Brown fuses West African, Afro-Caribbean, capoeira, Katherine Dunham, Alvin Ailey, hip-hop and more, all African-related. It's hard to think of any other choreographer working with such an uncompromising methodology-- or one that can be simultaneously so inviting and confusing for some viewers.

The aesthetic Brown celebrates is not linear European theater; it wanders. There is no particular focus, nor necessarily any great finale. So audiences can be bewildered, even lulled into thinking it's all one big blur. The trick for Brown, who so rigorously employs African and Afro-Caribbean multiplicity of movement, is to bring his audience into a different way of seeing dance. He managed that on opening night, but it took until the last dance for the audience to relax and start hollering.

Come Ye, the program opener and a local premiere, was an open-armed call to prayer using wonderful Nina Simone songs which segued into the more aggressively political Afro-pop of Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Folks were moving all over the stage, in the light, out of the light, together, not together. When a screen appeared overhead showing images of non-violent protest, you could almost feel the audience's relief. This was what it was about: It was a protest dance. Or was it?

Brown himself performed The King (a Dance Celebration commission), using James Brown music; the title could signify either the dancer-choreographer or the musician, both being monarchs of a sort. The boss gave an undulating master class in exactly the kind of rolling, contradictory, jazzy moves his work celebrates.

Order My Steps, another biblically inspired praise dance, uses the un-gospel-like sounds of minimalist pioneer Terry Riley's music. This was a more enigmatic piece. It began, it proceeded and then it ended. At any given time the stage was full of dancers doing different things: some moving in slow motion, some frantically shifting every body part in a different direction and some completely stationary.

By the time things wound up with Grace, the audience was starting to relax and even tried clapping in time. One of Brown's juicy dancers comes prowling out onstage, shoulders hunched, knees bent, bare feet hitting the floor flatly, arms punching forward—and then, upon reaching center stage, somehow keeps making the same moves, only now backward into the wings. Anyone could see they were watching great dancing. Brown presented the evidence all right, ultimately winning his case.

--Janet Anderson

(j_anderson@citypaper.net)

Dec. 8, Annenberg Center