GO FROM CANVAS TO STAGE WITH GARTH FAGAN DANCE.

Byline: Vicki Smith Paluch Correspondent

Modern dance choreographer Garth Fagan has no time for angst. He's too busy celebrating.

Fagan, 64, lives by the adage, ``Find the good and praise it,'' written by the late novelist Alex Haley, who was the choreographer's friend and supporter.

During a telephone conversation from his office in Rochester, N.Y., Fagan used the word ``celebrate'' at least eight times while describing various aspects of his dances and his process of creating the dance works. As a black artist coming of age in the early 1970s, he knows about struggling to make his choreographic voice heard. He drew inspiration from African-American choreographer Alvin Ailey and artist Romare Bearden, a leading force in the Harlem Renaissance.

``I remember one evening when they (Ailey and Bearden) were telling me how to stay true to yourself as an artist and how to get around the prejudice by looking for the good in the situation,'' Fagan recalled. ``They told me, yes, there is racism, and yes, it is a problem, but you can't let that stop you. There were and are a lot of negative things, and a lot of wonderful things, too.'' Fagan continued. ``I focus on the positive because it leaves more energy to combat the negative.''

Garth Fagan Dance will be celebrating the art of Romare Bearden, nicknamed Romie, with ``DANCECOLLAGEFORROMIE,'' which will be performed this weekend at the Ahmanson Theatre, along with other dance works by Fagan.

Fagan, a native of Jamaica whose style of modern dance is as eclectic as his taste in music, is best known to mainstream theatergoers as the Tony-Award winning choreographer of the Broadway musical ``The Lion King.''

However, his dance company has been around for 34 years. ``Garth Fagan's contribution to the modern dance vocabulary is one of the best,'' said Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Just as Bearden is known for his collages, Fagan creates movement collages utilizing African, Caribbean, classical ballet, modern and postmodern dance forms, playing up the contrasts while blending them into a cohesive whole.

``The whole area of collage interests me. How you put these disparate pieces together to create harmony and yet keep an edge,'' Fagan said. ``That's how we are similar and why I respond so much to Romie's art.''

Garth Fagan Dance, as a company, also has the feel of a collage. His dancers come in various ages from 21 to 52 and in different sizes and shapes, from tall and willowy to short and muscular.

``I don't like that cookie-cutter look of the same length of limb and style of hair,'' he said. ``As a contemporary choreographer who works with the contemporary issues, I have to have a little bit of the nitty gritty.''

Fagan lent two of his Bearden works to the National Gallery's exhibition, and within ``DANCECOLLAGEFORROMIE,'' he makes a direct reference to one of them, ``Down Home Also,'' in a duet by the same title.

``In the collage, a man and a woman are lying on the ground. It's clear they're very good buddies. It is a depiction of a black male and female who, despite the bad things that happened to them in the South, have taken the time to love each other and to support each other,'' he said.

Dancers Norwood Pennewell and Keisha Clarke portray the couple who, as in any a mature relationship, have had some discord, but in the end their relationship is about love.

The piece is arranged in three movements with scores by Dmitri Shostakovich, Brazilian classical composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and Jelly Roll Morton.

Dance critic Clive Barnes said ``DANCECOLLAGEFORROMIE'' ``has fiercely right style with the eclectic score suggesting a collage-like structure. Fagan's essential nonlinear dances reveal a coiled inner tension, matched with a quirky asymmetric grace.''

During the two-day engagement, the company will also perform Fagan's ``Translation Transition'' (2002) with music by Jazz Jamaica All Stars, and his 1980 work ``Prelude (Discipline Is Freedom), as well as ``Woza'' with music by Lebo M., a South African composer who collaborated with Fagan on ``The Lion King.''

``Prelude (Discipline Is Freedom)'' opens both programs, introducing Fagan's dance style to the audience in a solo danced in silence on the bare stage. The solo then becomes a company piece with music by Abdullah Ibrahim and Max Roach.

The work's subtitle, ``Discipline Is Freedom,'' is a reference to something Fagan's father always told him when the young Fagan didn't want to crack the books and study. Now, ``discipline is freedom'' refers to the life of a dancer who must train his body daily to have the freedom to perform on stage.

GARTH FAGAN DANCE

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets: $25 to $55. [phone] or www.musiccenter.org.

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Photo:

Norwood Pennewell, who has been with Garth Fagan Dance since 1978, will perform the initially solo and silent ``Prelude (Discipline Is Freedom),'' at the Ahmanson.

Basil Childers