Colorado Dance Festival, Boulder Theater and Charlotte York Irey Theater, Boulder, Colorado, July 5-August 1, 1998.

COLORADO DANCE FESTIVAL BOULDER THEATER AND CHARLOTTE YORK IREY THEATRE, BOULDER, COLORADO JULY 5-AUGUST 1, 1998 REVIEWED BY JANINE GASTINEAU

In the second season of its four-year project, "Let's Dance Together! The Americas," Colorado Dance Festival continues to explore and celebrate "the connections between popular and concert dances," as its mission statement reads. CDF's Performance Series (there are also classes and a Family Series) featured Urban Bush Women, David Dorfman Dance, and Os Capoeiras: the Afro-Brazilian Ensemble.

These three companies lacked the historical and geographic crossovers seen in last season's performers: Africa was evoked by Chuck Davis's African American Dance Ensemble, Rennie Harris's PureMovement, and Muntu Dance Theater; Latin America by Argentina's Tangokinesis and Costa Rica's Curubande Dance Company. This year's troupes also lacked an artistic presentation that either combined social and popular dance or magnified social dance to a performance level. Their connection to each other was tenuous, although several memorable performances made for a respectable season.

Urban Bush Women, long-standing favorites with CDF audiences, returned for their third full-company appearance with a new set of dancers accompanying UBW founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and long-time member Christine King. First was Zollar's Self-Portrait, a piece about "looking at who we are while making a work about looking at who we are." It's sprinkled throughout with small moments of honest self-revelation and nuggets of Zollar's typically generous movement and sharp sense of fun, but the big picture seemed unformed. The poignant Transitions was clearer, with dancers telling childhood stories and adult feelings about God, in movement that was alternately furious and lyrical. Batty Moves ("batty" is the Jamaican term for buttocks) was an inspiring dance anthem to the pelvis, with rapid-fire rotations and shimmies. UBW's newer crew is an appealing bunch, especially tiny, fiery Carolina Garcia and delicate Dionne Kamara.

While soccer remains Brazil's most popular sport, capoeira runs a very close second. This martial art form was created in the sixteenth century by Africans from Angola sent into slavery in South America. Forbidden any weapon or means of strength against the slaveholders, the slaves disguised capoeira as a dance form. Os Capoeiras: the Afro-Brazilian Ensemble, a company of ten dancers, musicians, and capoeiristas from the state of Bahia in Brazil, offered a generous dose of an amazing dance language.

The languid Agatha Olivieira, the lone woman in the company, stood out both as Oxum, the goddess of fertility, and in a love duet, Capoeira do Amor ("Capoeira of Love"), opposite capoeirista Jefferson Viana da Silva (a.k.a. Envergado). The men overall exhibited a raucous wild energy and astonishing athletics (head spins, handstands on a single hand, springs into the air with virtually no preparation, flips both front-to-back and sideways) that overcame a lack of tight ensemble dancing.

David Dorfman Dance closed the season at the Charlotte York Irey with three captivating dances. Using a variety of sounds--spoken text and/or recorded vocals, live instrumentals--and movement--big, beautiful phrases and lifts that ate up the space--all three numbers posed eternal questions: Who am I? What do I want or need? Will anyone want me? Gone Right Back was witty, too; it opened with Dorfman upstage, standing on a piano, playing a drawn-out chord on his frequent prop, an accordion. Later he embraced another dancer wearing a toy squeezebox on her back, and they slowly two-stepped around the periphery, playing each other's instruments--or were they toying with each other? Curt Haworth, stuck in a frozen position, asked Tom Thayer repeatedly, "Will you move me?" Thayer complied, with hilarious results: Haworth's arm cocked behind his head, legs bent in an impossible-to-hold lunge. An insistent Jeanine Durning begged assistance or manipulation: "Will you hold me while I try to get away?" "Will you put your hand on my forehead?" Their words were a compelling undercurrent of need and desire.

Dorfman, a completely engaging dancer built more like a wrestler, moved through some furious phrases with a bemused expression. As a choreographer, his cleverness and taste combined to unite disparate elements easily, milking laughs from a kitschy reference or investing the odd with surprising dignity. His ever-present accordion was an example of both.

A Cure for Gravity best translated the evening's theme--the vulnerable, questioning self--into movement without words. Set to an emotional score (selections from Joe Jackson's album Heaven & Hell), the five-part suite opened with three couples kissing, each pair drifting apart, then together, and apart again. The dancers moved into light, then darkness, through flailing phrases with swimming arms and legs, spirals, big lifts, then onto a human pyramid at the end, reaching and reaching as the lights faded away.

It was a powerful ending for the festival, but a disjointed feeling lingered, with the three companies presented only superficially linked. While individual impressions were strong, the 1998 season fell short in fulfilling the stated mission of "Let's Dance Together! The Americas." This, an expectation CDF created and fulfilled beyond expectation last year, can surely be repeated with the excellence they've demonstrated from their first season.