On the beat Seán Curran returns BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Whenever New York-based dancer/choreographer Seán Curran performs or teaches in Rhode Island, he’s coming back to his roots, for it was during his freshman year at Roger Williams College that he first took dance classes as an adult. Under Kelli Wicke Davis’s guidance, he auditioned for the dance program at NYU and transferred there to complete college. In his senior year at NYU, Curran met Bill T. Jones and subsequently spent 10 years performing with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Next came a four-year stint with Stomp and, in 1997, the founding of the Seán Curran Company. This Friday (December 5) at Rhode Island College, they will present two works from their current repertory, and 16 dancers from the RIC Dance Company will perform a piece that Curran adapted for them during a fall residency.

This fall, under a grant from the National College Choreography Initiative called "Rescuing Repertory," Curran, 42, was at RIC to re-stage a 1995 piece, Where I End and We Begin. "It has to do with connectedness and community," Curran explained in a phone conversation last week. "It’s about the individual vs. the group, and it looks at the difference between loneliness and solitude."

Curran’s earlier work often focused on that kind of existential question or on the anguish of interpersonal relationships; the emotional content was inescapable. But even then his solos had a humorous edge.

"In the early solos, I wanted people to laugh through the tears," Curran remembered. "It was very autobiographical, and I was looking for the poignant. Now that I’m older and more grounded and more settled, I want to make people laugh. I never set out to make funny dances, but once I put myself into the pieces . . . ."

A childhood fascination with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin — "they were brilliant dancers, you know" — and an Irish flair for entertaining — "I’m a ham at heart" — are woven through many of Curran’s pieces, including one of the two company performances at RIC, Metal Garden.

"I made this for six dancers, but I put myself in as the gardener and as the comic relief," Curran confessed. "I come on with a watering can, a shovel, a ladder, and I needed one large prop as a joke. I found a plastic deer with a light bulb, and I can move his head. It acts as punctuation."

Amadinda Dances, based on a Tigger Benford composition (as is Metal Garden), sets a different mood, with a visual rhythm and pattern. The amadinda is an East African five-tone xylophone that is played by three musicians who produce two simultaneous rhythms. This aural duality is picked up in the black-and-white costumes of the dancers — white on the front, black on the back, with red sleeves.

So how did his work with Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane and with Stomp influence Curran, who has also choreographed for the Muppets and for James Joyce’s The Dead?

"From Bill, I learned about a respect for outrageousness and that all work is political," Curran responded. "From Arnie, a great respect for formalism and for the power of silence. Stomp taught me how to think like a musician, with counterpoint, fugue, improvisational fills, so many layers of rhythm."

Though Curran is always listening to music that he might make dances for, he can also be inspired by things he reads or films he sees. "I create fairly abstract modern dance, but I want it to be idea-driven," he stressed. "I’m not telling stories, but I do want to arouse emotion in the viewer, and I do want to make poems. Metal Garden is political in the sense that I have three couples, one with two women, one with two men, and one male/female. In some tiny towns, audiences would still be shocked by that."

But Curran is undeterred, even by a recent censorship go-round in Utica, New York, where some teachers refused to bring their students to a performance because one of his pieces begins with a kiss between same-sex couples. Nonetheless, his company tours all year and will be back at Jacob’s Pillow next summer. Curran is slated for a project with Fusionworks in the near future.

"My thing is that I want to be an ambassador for the art form," Curran said. "There’s too much way-out-there stuff, which I support, but it’s o.k. to be accessible too."

And funny.

The Seán Curran Dance Company will perform on Friday, December 5 at 8 p.m. in Sapinsley Hall in the Nazarian Center at Rhode Island College, 600 Mt. Pleasant Avenue, Providence. Call (401) 456-8144.