AMERICARTES BRINGS A HEMISPHERE OF DANCE TO D.C.

Washington, D.C., will sizzle over the next four years as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts celebrates AmericArtes. The festival, which will draw dancers, actors, singers, and musicians from throughout the Americas, opened on February 5 with a gala sampling that portended the diversity and distinction of the dance yet to come.

The concept is rooted in a three-decade Kennedy Center tradition of honoring the cultures of specific countries. France, Germany, Ireland, and Israel are among those that have been featured. "We try to make the link between the local community and the global community." explained Alicia Adams, the Kennedy Center's director of special programming.

It was Adams who assembled the Kennedy Center's hugely successful, multi-year African odyssey. One of its most popular sequences was "Expresiones Latinas," displaying the heritage of the African diaspora south of the border. "Those programs sold out," said Adams, "and there was a hue and cry from the community to focus on Latin America." AmericArtes, also curated by Adams, is the Kennedy Center's response to that clamor.

Interspersed among the musical and theatrical offerings that unfolded on opening night, the dance performances were polished and powerful. The celebration hosted resplendent drummers and dancers from the American Indian Dance Theater, as well as Julio Bocca partnering first Cecilia Figaredo and then a table in two smoldering excerpts from Piazzolla Tango Vivo. Los Danzaq de Ayacucho performed Peru's centuries-old scissors dance, named for the steel castanets that accompany the intricate footwork and acrobatics. The danger-defying, ballet-tinged exuberance of Rio de Janeiro's Companhia de Danca Deborah Colker also electrified the stage.

Many of the groups in this year's cycle had visited the United States before, but had not been seen in Washington. The scissors dancers, for example, had performed twice on Indian reservations in the Northwest, but not in a theatrical venue. Colker's company had appeared in New York's Joyce Theater. But she used her Kennedy Center appearance for the U.S. premiere of her stunning contemporary ballet Casa, an hour-long work exploring the physical structure, as well as positive and negative symbolism, associated with house and home. She followed up with a Washington premiere of Rota, a Bill T. Jones-meets-Twyla Tharp display of cutting-edge technique that had dancers perched on a twenty-two-foot-high, one-and-a-half-ton hamster wheel for a spectacular finale.

Ballet Nacional de Cuba closes the 2001 potpourri in November. Then Brazil and Argentina move center stage with a lineup for April 2002 that already counts Grupo Corpo from the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais and, Adams hopes, the Washington debut of Bocca's Ballet Argentino. For 2003, the spotlight is on Mexico and the Andean countries and, in 2004, Central America.

Adams has spent three years traveling throughout the hemisphere to identify the artists for this festival. "I was looking for the unique, not the stereotypical," she said, "and one of the stunning things about Latin America is that there is incredible dance."