DCDT PREMIERE BRINGS GREED AND SEDUCTION TO WASHINGTON.

WASHINGTON--Passion is the most important thing to Juan Carlos Rincones. As director and choreographer of D.C. Dance Theater (DCDT), his ultimate goal is to retrieve an emotion--any emotion--out of his audience. "If movement isn't passionate then it's bland, boring, insipid, tasteless," he says with a thick Venezuelan accent. "I just have to say something."

His company's April 23 performance at the Duke Ellington Theater will feature a D.C. premiere called Having ... Not. With three men and one woman, the dance centers upon a golden ball, which represents greed and seduction. As in most loss-of-innocence tales, the characters in Having ... Not start out being playful and naive; get frustrated and confused; and are enlightened, if jaded, at the end.

The performance will also include Of Short Waltzes, Winter and Loneliness, a funny take on personal ads in which the all-female cast speaks about relationships and heartache as they roll around on the ground wearing cocktail dresses. "If you are emotionally available to develop an intimate relationship, let's go for a frappuccino," one dancer says in the piece.

Rincones named Departures, a third piece to be performed at the Duke Ellington, while dropping off his mother at the airport for a return flight to her home in Venezuela. "I looked up at the monitor and saw `departures' and my heart sank," he said. It's set to a Venezuelan song--"Tonada de la Luna Llena" (Song of the Full Moon)--played by Simon Diaz on a cuatro, a guitar with four strings.

Rincones's passion doesn't stop at the stage. Through a program called Share the Dance, he and the company give away more than 1,000 free tickets to students and local residents to attend a performance. The company also performs and teaches at homeless shelters, hospitals, and nursing homes.

"It's so inspirational to allow people to interpret what they see any way they want," said Rincones of the audience feedback following a Share the Dance performance. "When they feel something, it feeds your soul as a performer. We're not discovering cures for AIDS, but I hope we're doing something."