Way Cool Fusionworks busts some new Moves BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Fusionworks Dance Company has titled their annual spring concert at Brown’s Ashamu Dance Theater (April 1, 2, and 3 ) Cool Moves. Is that because the music is hip? Philip Glass, Seal, local R&B group PowerHouse, and a thoroughly post-modern collage by local musician Ron Schmitt certainly qualify. Is it because new dances and new dancers are giving a cutting edge to the movement? Or is it because this 17-year-old modern dance company is feeling its oats and proclaiming that they’ve always been way cool? The answer is: all of the above. Founder and artistic director Deb Meunier is premiering three pieces, company member Kerrie-Jean Hudson one and there’s an all-out improv piece to Schmitt’s music.

But the evening begins with an old favorite, The Parsons Etude, a four-and-a-half-minute piece which choreographer David Parsons made for the Repertory Etudes Project, which was initiated by the American Dance Legacy Institute at Brown, in order to record and preserve modern dance works. For their first presentation of this work in March 2001, the Fusionworks dancers learned the piece from the Institute’s videotape and were coached by former Paul Taylor dancer Ruth Andrien.

Here’s what I wrote about it when I saw it three years ago: "The first 90 seconds contain so much metronomic arm-swinging and fast jumps and leaps that the viewer is not surprised to see all three dancers soon collapse on the floor, in typical sleep positions. They shift these positions slowly, as sleepers do, but the shifting becomes faster and faster until it’s almost spasmodic . . . Parsons’s dance vocabulary is always full of surprises: a quick slap on the thighs, a hop into the air with a hip-twist before landing, a wide-legged bounce, a hip-thrust before a spin. These moves convey Parsons’s tongue-in-cheek humor and they build a pushing, throbbing sense of energy that also spells fun."

Second on the program is Hudson’s piece, titled Elysium, a reference, according to Hudson, of its two dancers being off in their own world, of two friends taking the time to enjoy the here and now. Seen in rehearsal last weekend, this dance alternates between slow, sculptural poses and brisk leaps and lifts that roll around each other like the frenetic flow of violin phrases in Glass’s music, to which it is set. Performed by Meunier and Donna McGuire, Elysium has eye-catching interactions — I particularly liked the moments when the two push each other into motion — and eye-pleasing angles that form from one dancer’s limbs to another.

Next comes the improv piece, titled Avoidance. Schmitt has composed four variations on this theme: avoiding insanity, avoiding illicit relationships, avoiding violence, and avoiding alcohol/drugs/overeating, with one of these presented at each of Fusionworks’s four performances. As the dance accompanist for the Rhode Island College Dance Company, Schmitt had come up with mixes of live and recorded music, sound effects and spoken word, to which the students did structured improvisations.

"The best term for this kind of sound score is the French term bricolage," Schmitt explained at last Saturday’s rehearsal. "It means an assemblage of pieces with a relationship among them that becomes more important than the fragments themselves. The combination exceeds the whole; the effect of the music is changed when it’s put up against music you wouldn’t expect."

Thus, Schmitt has combined elevator music, opera, polkas, Led Zeppelin, Broadway show tunes, animated cartoon soundtracks, dogs barking, and the words of a man making comments on musical terms. And the dancers have been assigned "rules" for their improv. They may move their bodies in certain directions (sideways or back-to-front, for example) when they are in certain areas of the stage and they are allowed free jams at various intervals. The one I saw was on avoiding insanity, and though I was fascinated by the music mix itself, I found it tricky to be pulled into the movement of the four dancers (Meunier, McGuire, Paige Parks, and Mary Manning).

Next are Meunier’s three new dances, with great extremes in mood, from Übergeeks (danced to PowerHouse) to Vesperae (Solennes de Confessore by Mozart) to Let’s Try Again, set to a soulful ballad by Seal. Laura Newell, Laura Zexter, Manning, and McGuire are dolled up (or down) in the dorkiest outfits Meunier could round up to "uglify this beautiful troupe," and they begin the piece with hands holding up their pants and mouths agape. Their jerky, awkward movements; their attempts at being "with it," in a round of finger-snapping; their direct, face-on "duh" expressions at the audience — all create a quick, comic take on trying (and not succeeding) at being "cool."

The Mozart piece, in three movements, has a Latin text that speaks of rejoicing, of mercy, and of exultation. The music took Meunier back to her early childhood when she attended Latin Mass with her grandmother. It reminded her of the awe she felt in witnessing the grandeur and dignity of the Catholic rituals, and she has infused the movement with that sensibility. Through permutations of turns, through arms raised up and heads following them, and through multitudes of leaps, the five dancers very effectively and quite beautifully portray the feelings conveyed in the text.

The last number is a solo by Paige Parks, to a bluesy love song by Seal. Parks lets one hand undulate slowly out the length of her arm, she runs another up the side of her face, she rolls her shoulders and shifts her head, all the while conveying a sense of anguish in the throes of lost love.

For the opening Thursday night concert in the Fusionworks series, the company will present Cool Moves Unwrapped, a chance to hear descriptions of the dances before they are performed and to discuss their creation and execution after the event. Here’s a great opportunity to learn more (and appreciate more) about what goes into making a modern dance piece.

Fusionworks will perform April 1 through 3 at Brown University’s Ashamu Dance Theatre, 77 Waterman Street, Providence. Call (401) 621-6123.