ARTS . Art

Danco's Victory Dance


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Published: Nov 15, 2006

Joan Myers Brown, Philadanco's founder, artistic director and presiding genius, is having what she calls her "awards month." Just back from Jamaica, where she was honored for establishing the International Association of Blacks in Dance, she next received an award from Dance Magazine. Still to come is Please Touch Museum's Great Friend of Children Award. "I just wish one of them would give me a check," she laughs, "so I could add a third floor to my building. Instead I get another plaque." Her walls are thick with plaques already. "Just means I don't have to keep painting the walls," she sighs.

She's also getting Danco ready for the opening of its fifth season as Kimmel Center's resident modern dance company. Brown likes to mix a program up. She looks for work from important choreographers of the past, which is why Joyce Trisler's 1969 Dance for Six starts things off. "I always include an older work because it's important for the youngsters of today to understand there was a great world of dance before they even were born."

Then she looks for the altogether new, which for this program means a world premiere: The Foul, from hot San Francisco choreographer Robert Moses, whose work has never been seen locally. In the "new to us" category is For Truth, which Ron K. Brown created at Wolf Trap in D.C. as a joint dance for his own company and Philadanco. Danco performs only its own section of this larger work. Brown is famous for deconstructing traditional African moves into modern dance.

Clever lady, Brown closes with Enemy Behind the Gates, perhaps the most popular work in Danco's current rep. The combination of Steve Reich's driving music and Christopher Huggins' propulsive, almost attack-mode movement unfailingly sends the audience into an applause orgy.

Philadanco, Thu.-Fri., Nov. 16-17, 7:30 p.m., Sat., Nov. 18, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m., Sun., Nov. 19, 2:30 p.m., $34-$46, Kimmel Center, 300 S. Broad St., 215-893-1999, www.kimmelcenter.org.