From China: A Trilogy of Modern Dance.

FROM CHINA: A TRILOGY OF MODERN DANCE TERRACE THEATER, KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE. PERFORMING ARTS, WASHINGTON, DC OCTOBER 7-9, 2005

To learn what modern dance looks like in China, find Willy Tsao. This Humphreyesque-trained dynamo holds a monopoly on modern dance in the nation of a billion people. At various times he has directed China's three major modern companies, which made up the "Trilogy of Modern Dance" program. Part of the Kennedy Center's month-long Festival of China, the bill meant to introduce audiences to contemporary Chinese dance.

With Tsao's pervasive influence, it's no surprise that all the dancers attack movement in a similar way. The women are lithe, unfussy, and mostly elegantly petite; the men, flexible and strong but not brashly virtuosic. Choreographically, these works exhibit a sense of dancerly fend shui. There's beauty in the way bodies have been architecturally arranged in intermingling duets, trios, and mix-and-match groupings, especially in husband-and-wife choreographic team Li Han-Zhong and Ma Bo's All River Red.

All River Red uses a reduced version of Stravinsky's sprawling, familiar Rite of Spring, and the dozen dancers from the Beijing Modern Dance Company (men in black Mao suits, women in Chinese-red dresses) emit an icy smoothness in counterpoint to the heated score. The work, intended to reflect the development of contemporary dance in China, intensifies incrementally as the beautifully trained dancers flick red scarves or decompress into lunges, their arms trailing slowly in tai chi poses. Yet the piece follows too closely the now near-generic score; fire final, literal tug-of-war is entirely too pedantic.

Derived from the stylistic essences of Chinese script, the excerpt from Upon Calligraphy, choreographed by Liu Qi for Guangdong Modern Dance Company's 12 fine dancers, emphasizes graceful curves intermingled with solid interlocking angles and lines. The movement language varies from mimicry of grounded, symmetrical Chinese characters to the spiraling undulations and delicate tracery of cursive. It's a poetic translation of text to movement. For Silver Rain, the evening's closer, Tsao culled excerpts from six works in the Hong Kong-based City Contemporary Dance Gompany's repertoire. Indecipherable as a whole, it left a raft of strong images in its wake. An athletic and acrobatic male solo performed at a barre in "Wanderings in the Realm of Lightness" hinted at the nobility and emptiness of modern life. In the inscrutable "Lost in a Melodramatic City," two women in outlandish red gowns mimicked opera singers. But Noel Pong's sweeping solo with a parasol in "Eulogy" closed the evening in a multicolored rain of confetti that referenced one of China's great advancements: fireworks. See www.kennedy-center.org.