Colorado Dance Festival.

VARIOUS SITES, BOULDER AND DENVER JULY 6-AUGUST 2, 1997 REVIEWED BY JANINE GASTINEAU

Colorado Dance Festival has long held a reputation for presenting dance as community, and the offerings this season, its fifteenth, realized this intent fully. Four companies from North and South America revealed dance not only as art, but as a unifier, a bridge of commonality between our differences. In addition all the troupes presented hybrids of sorts: an ethnic or social form combined with postmodern dance or presented in a concert setting, creating something new which retains and deepens the best qualities of the old.

On hand this summer for the festival's performance component (CDF also includes classes and workshops) were Philadelphia's Rennie Harris PureMovement; North Carolina's African American Dance Ensemble, led by the legendary Chuck Davis; Tangokinesis, all the way from Buenos Aires, making its U.S. debut; Chicago's Muntu Dance Theater; and Costa Rica's Curubande Dance Company.

The African American Dance Ensemble performed in Denver at the leo Parker Robinson Dance Theater, capping a two-year audience development project between CDF, Robinson, and several African American arts organizations in the metropolitan area. The former church setting in Denver's Five Points neighborhood seemed especially appropriate for the effervescent Davis, an ambassador of "Peace, Love, Respect for Everybody"--the company motto--whose exhilarating performances are both edifying and a great deal of fun. Through traditional West African dance, Davis and company led the audience in song and simple movement, ending the evening with everyone on their feet, dancing. Marvelous!

So was the festival's closer, a collaborative performance by Muntu Dance Theater and Curubande Dance Company. Born of a meeting between the two companies' artistic directors Amaniyea Payne and Liliana Valle, respectively, this collaboration was furthered by the support of CDF through artist residency grants, donated studio space, even visa negotiation. Each company alternated repertory until the evening's end, when all the dancers appeared onstage in We Move As One/Nos Movemos Como Uno Solo. A year in the making, this work revealed succinctly the common roots and similar expressions of Latin and African social dance, united centuries ago in the Caribbean by the slave trade. Jose Luis Ramirez, a Curubande standout dancing with boundless joy, was unforgettable.

But it was in the other two performances that the summer's theme--"Let's Dance Together: The Americas!"--found its freshest and most meaningful result. Rennie Harris PureMovement opened the season. Harris, still very young as a choreographer, already reveals a profound understanding of the bodys physical capacity and its expressive potential. With his talent for deconstructing hip-hop's intricacies while filtering it through a postmodern dance language, he crafts something both timeless in its revelations of the human spirit and utterly new in its physicality. Through several pieces (notably, Endangered Species and P-Funk), the evening arched from oppression to celebration, moving through an African American experience, then gradually fanning out to encompass the broadest humanity. In his virtuosic, all-male company of seven, Harris and two compelling performers stand out by virtue of their depth and inherent gentility: Clyde Evans, Jr. and Joey Middleton.

In 1993, Argentine choreographer Ana Maria Stekelman merged the characteristics of tango with the values of modern dance. For the first time, tango's rhythms, musicality, and delicious tension between the sexes merged with modern dance's sense of drama. The result: Stekelman's signature work, Tangokinesis. She formed a company of the same name, and they are already in a miss-them-at-your-own-peril category. In a series of overlapping short works (Act I) and Concierto para Bongo (Act II) Stekelman played with elements from both forms--mixing genders playfully by coupling two men or two women, using this dance hybrid to address themes of religion and death, all the while wielding within her choreography a fine-tuned wit. Though you could clearly see tango's bone structure and modern's muscularity throughout, the result was completely fresh. Of her dancers, with varied backgrounds in tango, modern and ballet, the women are beautifully placed and turned out and the men are fluid and powerful. By intermission, the packed house of nearly a thousand was on its feet, cheering.

The festival made a leap of faith this year into larger venues, adding 300-seat and 950-seat theaters to the usual 150-seat Charlotte York Irey Theater. The happy result: houses sold to capacity for all performances in Denver and Boulder, proving further dance's universal appeal and CDF's particular success at promoting and presenting it.