Good vs. evil plays out.

Byline: Matt Cooper The Register-Guard

In what may well be a first for playgrounds the world over, it was the kids who did the watching Saturday and the adults who had all the fun.

The event was modern dance, staged on the unlikeliest of stages: A play structure at the former Whiteaker Elementary School near downtown Eugene.

The result was a highly synchronized mix of artistic expression, physical exertion and - let's not forget - superheroes.

"Everybody loves a superhero," director Sara Alessi Zolbrod said, minutes before her performance began. "What's not to like?"

Zolbrod, a 32-year-old choreographer and dancer from Eugene, got the idea for the performance, "Playground Shakedown," from an activity called parkour.

Parkour, often done in urban areas, involves moving over, under and around obstacles such as rails or walls.

It was featured in the opening sequence of the latest James Bond movie, "Casino Royale," during which Bond gives chase to a nimble adversary who dives through open windows, springs off walls and leaps from rooftops.

Zolbrod put the activity to use for her art. Decked out in tight-fitting costumes and backed by a funky musical duo, she and four other dancers staged a good-vs.-evil battle on the play structure, using ladders, rails, bridges and slides as the vehicles for their moves.

They hung upside-down and did somersaults into a slide. They crept up ladders and vaulted over rails. They did headstands and high kicks and, at one point, carried the smallest among them overhead.

If it sounds like a workout, it was.

Dancer Josh Marean, 35, said he trained for weeks in his backyard, holding a large rock in various positions to strengthen his arms and back.

"I always wanted to be an acrobat," he said. "This feels like a small opportunity to explore that frontier."

Zolbrod, a licensed massage therapist, has studied acting and playwriting for more than 10 years and is helping to write a textbook on improvisational dance.

She is the former managing director of Joint Forces Dance Company/DanceAbility.

The performance - which continues tonight and is appropriate for all ages - was Zolbrod's first choreographed piece in Eugene, and the first for the dance group, which doesn't have a name yet, she said.

"If the dance piece were a movie, it would be a sci-fi, action-comedy romance, like `X-Men' meets `Mad Max' meets `Wonder Woman,' ' Zolbrod said. "The piece blends super<302>hero and comic book themes with hip-hop and martial arts-inspired moves."

Among a crowd that weathered a light rain for Saturday's performance, Eugene resident Geni Morrow gave the performance rave reviews.

"It's fresh, innovative, daring - and why not?" she said. "Instead of bodies just doing what bodies can do, she has mixed the element of structure, thereby enhancing what the bodies can do."

Wayne Eastburn / The Register-Guard

CAPTION(S):

Dancers in "Playground Shakedown," (from bottom left) Dana Bader, Sara Alessi Zolbrod, Josh Marean, Quintin Ehley and Darrell Shaft, form a bridge on Saturday at former Whiteaker Elementary as part of a modern dance performance pitting superheroes against villains. "It's fresh, innovative, daring - and why not?" GENI MORROW EUGENE RESIDENT Wayne Eastburn / The Register-Guard The dancers in "Playground Shakedown" used hip-hop and martial arts-inspired moves in their Saturday performance.