ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT HEATS UP NEW YORK IN JANUARY.

NEW YORK CITY--For three weeks in January, ballet, jazz, and modern dance and performance art will be all under the same roof during the Altogether Different Festival at the Joyce Theater. Seven companies will alternate evening and afternoon performances, offering premieres and newly reworked pieces. The festival, now in its tenth season, offers young modern dance companies an opportunity to perform at the 472-seat Joyce as a way of attracting a larger audience. The festival has returned to its original scale, after last year presenting only five companies over two weeks.

"There were so many people that belonged this year that we went back up to three weeks and seven companies," says Linda Shelton, executive director at the Joyce Theater. Of the seven companies, only two will be return visits, Dance by Neil Greenberg and Sara Pearson/Patrik Widrig and Company. In the past, the festival has chosen predominantly New York companies because of the management seminars it also offers. This yeas' will feature two non-New York companies, Seattle's 33 Fainting Spells and Los Angeles's Lula Washington Dance Theatre. "33 Fainting Spells are cutting edge whereas Lula is a little more inclusive, including ballet, jazz, performance art," Shelton says.

33 Fainting Spells, which performed last summer at Jacob's Pillow, will open the festival and offer the evening-length work Sorrow's Sister, a tale set in World War II Europe with music by Bartok and Shostakovich. The eclectic Lula Washington Dance Theatre, now in its twentieth season, will present the world premiere of Death and Eros, choreographed by Donald McKayle, as well as signature pieces by Washington.

New York companies include Neil Greenberg and his company, Dance by Neil Greenberg, following up on a successful 1997 Altogether Different engagement, presenting This is What Happened, a "danse-noire" trio set to Hitchcock film music by Bernard Herrmann. Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks will present the premiere of Reverse Psychology: Agenda Number One: Japan, with original music by New York guitarist/ composer Marc Ribot, as well as Footprints of War. The unique Goldhuber & Latsky will present the epic evening-length piece I Hate Modern Dance, with lighting by 1999 Bessie Award winner Robert Weirzel.

Return performers Sara Pearson/Patrik Widrig and Company will dance their multimedia world premiere Hereafter, with music by Bessie Award-winning composer Robert Eeen. Pascal Rioult Dance Theatre will perform Wien, Rioult's interpretation of Ravel's La Valse, and present a world premiere choreographed to the music of Mozart.