Liftoff Fusionworks’ Soaring BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

You can always count on Fusionworks for a fun and funny piece among their more serious dances. In their fall concert, titled Soaring (at Rhode Island College’s Sapinsley Hall November 19 and 20), that will most likely be the newly-created Oh, Tom, You Naughty, Naughty Boy, set to four songs by Tom Jones.

"It’s kind of like Charlie’s Angels meets modern dance," quipped Fusionworks artistic director Deb Meunier at a recent run-through in the company’s Lincoln studio. "We just want it to be groovy." And that it is. Meunier choreographed the piece in collaboration with Brooke Young, of the Phaze II dance group, by combining modern dance with hip-hop and jazz. The Fusionworks dancers, along with three dancers from Phaze II, flounce and finger-snap, strut and strike attitudes. "You don’t have to be beautiful to turn me on," sings Jones. But each dancer conveys her own sassy and sexy sense of self and looks as if she knows she’s beautiful.

In the second movement, as Jones croons about being "the whisky in your water and the sugar in your tea," Tim Rubel staggers drunkenly on stage and is joined in a Chaplinesque trio by Mary Manning and Donna McGuire. They try to hold each other up; they fall onto the floor and roll over in backward somersaults; they weave slowly under each other’s arms. The next segment finds Laura Newell, Paige Parks, and Stephanie Stanford boogying to Jones’s "Black Betty." With hops and jumps, slides and pauses, this section stresses the funky beat of back and forth, up and down, turn, spin, stop . . . and then hips start to swivel and shoulders to shimmy once again. The last movement brings all 11 dancers back on stage for an energetic finale, with periodic mime to the lyrics and more hip hop in the mix.

Meunier’s Vesperae, set to Solennes de Confessore by Mozart, premiered in last spring’s concert. The Latin text in this choral work speaks of rejoicing, of mercy, and of exultation. Meunier has said that the music reminded her of the grandeur and dignity she recognized in the Latin Mass when she was awestruck as a child. The loops and swoops in Mozart’s score are echoed in the movements of the five dancers in this piece: rounded arms swing overhead or are held in a tight spiral against the body as the dancers turn or spin; legs reach out to trace circular movements on the floor; the dancers move in and around each other in fugue-like circles. When the music soars, so do the dancers, in leaps and jetŽs of all kinds. Vesperae has an appropriately classical look, and Mary Manning’s solo in the middle movement is beautifully executed.

Another memorable solo is by Paige Parks’s Let’s Try Again, set to a bluesy love song by Seal. Parks opens and ends with her back to the audience and one hand undulating slowly down the length of her arm, a gesture of languorous sadness. She shifts her shoulders and follows with her head; she rolls down onto the floor and back up; and she bends forward, in a three-count shudder of her abdomen, as if trying to absorb the gut-wrenching hurt she feels.

Two more new pieces on the docket for this concert are Meunier’s Pulsar and Stephanie Stanford’s Just a Few, the latter performed by eight dancers from Fusionworks II, the apprentice company. Just a Few begins with arms held in a very balletic pose, but the minute the dancers raise one leg with a foot flexed up, we know we’re in for some more groovin’ movement. Meunier has given her dancers an extra challenge in Pulsar. It’s not just steps this quartet (Stanford, Newell, McGuire, and Amy Burns) must learn, but how to work with long pieces of elastic tied to their waists and to each other. Meunier has said that this dance is about the connectedness of people and the connectness of all things to life and death. Recent readings on string theory and subatomic particles inspired her to look at it in an even more universal way. Thus the name, Pulsar, and the pulsing original score by Michael DeQuattro and Ron Schmitt. The four dancers face inward, their bodies forming a tight clump, with only occasional leaning of one head onto another’s shoulder, as their hands hold tight to each other’s forearms. Gradually they unwind to the length of the band, to four points of a rectangle. They take hold of the band, so that they can move under or over it, and then, with both hands, they pull it up to form a large triangle around their bodies. As they put one foot through a loop and come through and out of it, it’s as if the whole construct is an ever-changing cat’s cradle — an ingenious idea that’s both graceful and captivating.

Fusionworks’ Soaring show does, indeed, take off. With infectious rhythms and alternately thoughtful and buoyant movement, it’s bound to lift your spirits. Fusionworks will perform at Rhode Island College on Friday and Saturday, November 19 and 20 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20. Call (401) 334-3091.