FRANCE DANCES THROUGH NEW YORK.

Three decades after visiting troupes from the States gave France a taste for modern dance, New York will sample that country's most dynamic contemporary companies this spring during the new festival "France Moves." Ten French companies will fill the city's theaters from April 23 to May 6.

Sent over as a group by the Association Francaise d'Action Artistique, the cultural wing of the French foreign ministry, the choreographers chosen by festival Artistic Director Yorgos Loukos include such familiar names as Maguy Marin, who has been pleasing crowds here since 1983, when she appeared in Durham, North Carolina, at the American Dance Festival; Jose Montalvo, who dazzled audiences last year with his American premiere of Paradis, and Angelin Preljocaj, honored with a Bessie Award in 1997 for Annonciation.

The festival will include no fewer than nine U.S. premieres, including the high-tech wizardry of Philippe Decoufle, known for his orchestration of the ceremonies of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France; the minimalist provocation of 27-year-old Boris Charmatz, whose piece Herses (une lente introduction) stunned the public when it premiered in France in 1999; and the Kafkaesque vision of Josef Nadj with his Hungarian-trained dancers in Les Veilleurs.

"Diversity," says Loukos, "is the thread that links these companies. Not only creatively, but also in terms of their ethnic origins, their style and their technique."

The companies performing during "France Moves" are representative of the flourishing world of modern dance in France, a young discipline that was sparked by the arrival of American dancers in the early 1970s, among them Carolyn Carlson and Alwin Nikolais. Carlson triumphed at the Palais Garnier in 1973 and has since settled in Paris, becoming the most Parisian of American dancers, while enthusiasm lives on for the work of Nikolais, who in his early days in France directed the country's first National Contemporary Dance Center (CNDC), in Angers, from its 1978 inception to 1981.

Only Merce Cunningham received a cold reception when he first appeared at the Theatre des Champs Elysees in 1966 and was nearly booed off the stage. "He has dishonored dance!" was one of the comments that could be read in the press following that performance. That cold reception was reversed in 1976 when, at the Avignon summer theater festival, Cunningham seduced the French, making his New York-based school an obligatory passage for young dancers in the early '80s.

"I'll never forget the time I spent in New York studying with Merce Cunningham" in 1980, reminisced 43-year-old Angelin Preljocaj, who spent eight months running between Cunningham's classes by day and the Manhattan clubs by night. "New York nights were as extraordinary and inspiring as Cunningham's classes. It was crazy, the city was unbelievably violent at the time!"

That violence can be witnessed in Paysage aprils la bataille (Scene after the battle), which Preljocaj will be presenting when he returns to the Joyce Theater. Combative yet humorous, it's constructed around an imaginary battle between the instinctive passion of Joseph Conrad and the pragmatism of Marcel Duchamp.

"What is at stake in this piece is the human body, the part of the universe where instinct and intelligence meet," Preljocaj said. "I tried to be playful, so there are serious, tragic and funny moments. It is a very physical piece but there are moments that bring us back to childhood, with little fairy tale-like touches."

For Loukos, whose work as artistic director of the Lyon Opera Ballet was instrumental in bringing Preljocaj to celebrity status in France, humor and playfulness are two elements that distinguish French dance today. In France, abstraction does still exist, but there is also a Latin element, a wittiness, a German-influenced theatricality intrinsic to the choreographers' work, he said.

"One can still see the influence of postmodernism in the construction of the pieces and the choreographic structure," Loukos said, "but the approach today is so personal, one can't easily categorize their current creations."

One example of that playfulness can be seen in the work of Philippe Decoufle, who has remained the most loyal to the teachings of Nikolais, under whom he studied at the CNDC in Angers. Like "Nik," Decoufle uses mesmerizing special effects, body-deforming costumes and video clips. His approach is based on illusion and magic, as in his latest multimedia extravaganza, the vaudevillian Shazam!, which his company, DCA, will be presenting at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Decoufle differs from Nikolais through his passion for the circus, a discipline that first attracted him early in the 1970s. "I always wanted to be on stage," said Decoufle, "and the circus was the perfect place to start." He evolved from the circus to dance during the early years of his career when dance was exploding onto the scene in France, yet the circus arts remain essential to Decoufle's style, an "acrobatic circus touch, funny, childlike and burlesque!" Loukos said.

Sharing the stage at BAM with Decoufle will be the Compagnie Montalvo-Hervieu, headed by Spanish-born Jose Montalvo and French native Dominique Hervieu, who return to New York with the American premiere of their high-speed baroque Le jardin io io ito ito. A vast collage in motion, the piece brings to life the limitlessness of the imagination in a salute to Dada and Max Ernst. The title is inspired by a collage by Ernst in which bird-headed men and women cry out: "Epopopoi, popai popopopoi, popoi io io iot itoi."

Designed to snub xenophobia, this wild garden is a celebration of today's diverse, multicultural and multilingual cities. For Montalvo, who was also a student of Carlson, Nikolais and Cunningham, today's choreography marks "an end to postmodernism. The artist no longer has to give his work meaning; rather, he must say what problems he is trying to solve."

The show is comprised of a mind-boggling series of 100 one-minute segments, including hip-hop danced to Vivaldi, flamenco alongside a circus act, and classical ballet in tandem with traditional African dance. An interactive video, complete with human-headed wild animals, forms the backdrop. Each dancer in the company has a clearly defined role, inspired initially by free-form improvisation before being shaped and fitted into the piece as a whole.

Approaching dancers in an individual way is perhaps one of the more remarkable changes to occur to Maguy Marin's style since her last appearance at the Joyce Theater in 1998, when she presented RamDam. Her 1999 departure I from Paris, where she ran the National Dance Center (CND) of Creteil, for Rillieux-la-Pape, an impoverished suburb on the outskirts of Lyons, marked a distinctive turning point for Marin.

"I suppose what has changed most," commented Marin, "is the work I have been doing on an individual level with the members of the company, working one-on-one on a personal level. It is radically different."

Her latest creation, Pour ainsi dire (So to speak), a trio that will be presented at the newly renovated New Victory Theater, is emblematic of her new approach. With its use of the spoken word, if only in broken, repetitious phrases, Pour ainsi dire is highly theatrical. Set in a very cozy makeshift apartment, a trio's movements are punctuated by the rhythm of their intertwining, erratic speech.

Well known in America for the wit and originality of May B, which recently celebrated its 400th performance, and such other works as Cendrillon and Coppdlia, Marin sees participating in "France Moves" as a chance to see New York audiences in a new light. "Since ten companies will be participating, even if people see only half of what is presented, I have the impression that there will be more interaction with the public," she said. "I am looking forward to that."

Among the lesser-known choreographers to be presenting their work during the festival is Blanca Li, who will be at the Kitchen with Zap Zap, a dance comedy that puts Blanca Li onstage as a talk-show host, Blanca Li as a crepe-cooking guest from Brittany, Blanca Li as a Chinese acrobat ... Dominique Boivin will be at the Alliance Franqaise with the humorous La Danse, une histoire a ma facon (The history of dance, my way); Lionel Hoche, who created his first choreography for the Paris Opera Ballet last autumn, will present Nychtemere, Volubilis/ Mirabilis, a sensual piece performed alongside an organist; and Fred Bendongue's Compagnie Azanie will celebrate African, Caribbean and Brazilian dance forms and musical rhythms.

"France Moves" will be enriched with a series of feature screenings of important French dance films, including Lettres d'Amerique, a short series made by Preljocaj and inspired by his 1991 visit to Ellis Island. The son of Albanian refugees, Preljocaj explores through dance and text the inner conflicts that are so much a part of the immigrant experience.

With diversity as its theme, "France Moves" is bringing to New York a glimpse of the result of thirty years of choreographic evolution, a salute to American contemporary dance and its profound influence. And after New York, "Who knows?" said Loukos. "Maybe it will go on moving somewhere else!"

FRANCE ON THE WEB

Here's where to find some of the visiting choreographers in

"France Moves" on the World Wide Web:

Philippe Decoufle: www.cie-dca.com

Maguy Marin: www.compagnie-maguy-marin-fr

Angelin Preljocaj: www.preljocaj.org

Jose Montalvo: www.ladanse.com/montalvo

Karyn Bauer is a Paris-based correspondent for Dance Magazine.