BJM_Danse.

[BJM_DANSE] THE JOYCE THEATER, NYC APRIL 17-22, 2007

Louis Robitaille's troupe, formerly known as Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, sailed into The Joyce Theater sporting its new, cyber-cool name--[bjm_danse]--and two New York premieres. Guest choreographers Rodrigo Pederneiras (from Brazil's Grupo Corpo) and Canadian-born Aszure Barton offered rollicking new pieces with irresistible warmth.

If Pederneiras's MAPA had a motto, it would be "Don't worry; be happy." The delectable music of Marco Antonio Pena Araujo--softly chiming percussion, fluttering flute melodies and high, chirping accents--inspired a nonstop fiesta of abstract movement that harmonized ballet, jazz, and Brazilian influences. Carrying their bodies loosely, dancers moved with equal measures of precision and elasticity. Fernando Velloso's black and-white Op-Art backdrop came alive with a succession of intense, drenching colors. Dark costumes gave way to vivacious paprika or sparkling white.

The stage picture continuously shifted with nary a dead, dull, or disconnected moment. With scarcely visible transitions, solos, duets, trios, and ensembles flowed one into another. The joy--especially in the sassy, rolling hips and mercurial footwork at which Robert Knowles excelled--simply couldn't be contained. In one passage set to a whistling gush of music, three women looped around the space like bold brushstrokes of red ink brightening a page.

MAPA's almost giddy inventiveness and buoyancy were more than matched in Barton's Les Chambres des Jacques, another strong entry from this rising young talent. Every bit as festive as Pederneiras's landscape, Jacques's room teemed with dancers in varying states of dishevelment: women cavorting in peasant's undergarments; men bare-chested under loose, rumpled jackets.

Barton plays hardball, never shrinking from the challenge of a quirky yet seamless, felicitous music collage--folk fiddling, klezmer, tango, opera, and Near Eastern--nor from a big stage and ensemble. Every movable part of each dancer's body counts for something, right down to Francine Liboiron suddenly shaking her tail feathers like a sparrow in its bath. Like so much else in Barton's busy, itchy, impetuous choreography, that shimmy is a gratuitous detail, existing for the dancer's fleeting pleasure--and ours.