The right moves The Brown Dance Ensemble struts its stuff BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

The first thing to know about the spring concert of the Brown Dance Ensemble is that the "ensemble" has many interlocking parts: students from dance classes; those performing in Dance Extension, the touring repertory company founded and directed by Julie Adams Strandberg; and the New Works/World Traditions Collective, founded by Michelle Bach-Coulibaly and Seydou Coulibaly to honor Mande traditions and new performance arts in and out of Africa. The eight pieces in this concert cover a lot of ground, from New York-based choreographers to works by alums to works by current Brown faculty.

The program leads off with adjunct faculty member and alum Carol Abizaid’s Civil Liberties (1984), set to James Brown’s "Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag." Lebanese native Abizaid came to this country 25 years ago, and with the 15 dancers in this piece, she celebrates the civil rights sometimes taken for granted in this country and the sacrifices that were made to attain them. Abizaid lived through the early stages of Lebanon’s civil war, and she has sought to come to terms with personal loss and the continuing unrest in her country through dance. The second half of the concert includes a second piece by Abizaid, Cedars Falling (also ’84), which focuses on a man and his wives surviving a bombing in Beirut.

Another faculty-generated piece is Annamaura Silverblatt’s His Mother, set to music by Tom Farrell. Silverblatt, whose work has often centered on the inner lives of women, shaped this dance around memories of herself coming to a new country, meeting her husband-to-be, and struggling to carve out a relationship with his mother.

Two dances by alums in this concert (which I saw in rehearsal) are Laura Bennett’s Reverie, to Michel LeGrand’s music from The Go-Between, and Lauren Hale’s Swept, to music by Michael Nyman from "Quartet No.2." Bennett’s piece is in five movements, with six dancers, and it’s as dreamy as its title to watch, its quick-paced trios and duos moving past one another in fugue-like turns, to one side, then the other, arms rounded balletically close to their hips. The fluid, almost perpetual motion of the dancers is interspersed with quieter moments, especially in the solos, as arms reach wide, the body tilts to one side, and the opposite leg is lifted. Reverie is a beautifully accomplished expression of a whirling journey through one’s past and future. It is also a finely crafted homage to Paul Taylor’s Airs.

"Most choreographers are conditioned not to imitate," Bennett mentioned after the run-through, "but if we look at other art forms, such as visual arts or musicians, part of what you first learn is to copy the masters and study how they did it."

In a program note, Hale points to her source of inspiration for Swept as "the migratory patterns and flocking movement of birds and the documentary Winged Migration." With a dozen dancers divided into an opening quintet, a trio, a quartet, and a finale, this piece also has constant movement, and as individuals look up and peel off to the back of their group, it is very reminiscent of birds trying to fly in a pattern.

The New Works/World Traditions Collective has completed more than 35 performance pieces, reconstructed folkloric ballets from Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso, and written five full evening "movement operas." Seen in its premiere a month ago at the Performance Studies International Festival #11, Dreamscapes from the Famished Road most resembled the latter, with music provided by two guitarists and two drummers. Choreographer and dancer in Dreamscapes Michelle Bach-Coulibaly describes it as "part political diatribe, part nightmare, and part call to love." West African ceremonial dances are woven together with contemporary dance theater for stunning images and memorable rhythmic passages.

The New York-based Troika Ranch team of Dawn Stoppiello and Mark Coniglio will present an excerpt of their multi-media work-in-progress, 16 (R)evolutions, using six Dance Extension dancers. Seen in rehearsal, without the videos that overlay and interact with the dancers in the concert version, this piece was still quite evocative, beginning with the Eve/Adam pair. Their movements are angular and at times animalistic (chest-beating, shoulder shrugs, one-legged hops), with the soundscape ranging from trains and motors to buzzing bees. The second couple mimes eating cornflakes, the sound of their crunch quite distinctly amplified. The last pair drag the first along the floor and then all six dancers suggest various animal positions, slithering on bellies and lumbering on all fours, illuminating their choreographers’ desire to trace the path of human evolution.

The last piece, Heavy Train, was made by New York-based choreographer and ’98 Brown alum Chris Elam, who taught a class in "Improbable Partnering" this semester at Brown. To the music of Milton Nascimento, with 11 dancers, this piece incorporates "improbable and unique partnering, chorus work, and interpersonal negotiations," in Elam’s words. Seen in a pre-concert run-through, the dance had intriguing narrative bits, as dancers clung to each other in unusual combinations or interacted so that one dancer calmed the frenzied hand or head movements of another. On the title, Elam commented: "The dance is like a delicate surrealist painting, and the dancers are moving through it like a train, propelling themselves forward."

So, tune in to the extensively varied and intensely created work of local and imported choreographers in the spring concert by the Brown Dance Ensemble.

The BrownUniversity Dance Ensemble Spring Concert will take place Thursday through Sunday, May 5 through 8 at the Stuart Theatre, 77 Waterman Street, Providence. Call (401) 863-2838.