PHILADELPHIA DANCES.

PHILADELPHIA DANCES UARTS DANCE THEATER, PHILADELPHIA SEPTEMBER 24-26, 1998-KAREN BAMONTE, MYRA BAZELL, MEREDITH RAINEY OCTOBER 22-24, 1998-AT MARAH DANCE THEATRE, LISA BARDARSON, DANCEFUSION

Partially funded by the William Penn Foundation, Philadelphia Dances is a three-year collaboration between the Philadelphia Dance Alliance and the University of the Arts School of Dance. Touring opportunities, residencies, artist-exchange programs, and this performance series are all part of the package, which will culminate with "2000 Feet--A Celebration of World Dance" in June 1999.

The two middle concerts in this four-part series showcased works that seem characteristic of the Philadelphia dance ethos. Whether in Karen Bamonte's exquisite solos, the small-group works by Pennsylvania Ballet's Meredith Rainey and the ballet-oriented At Marah Dance Theatre, Myra Bazell's and Lisa Bardarson's excursions into cultish communities, or Dancefusion's carrying forth the modern dance tradition, this community prefers dramatic, expressive dance.

Bamonte's three solos are excerpted from larger works. The most arresting one, Difficult Loves (1994), succeeds through simplicity: Performing a loop of simple reach, bend, twist, curtsy movements, she slowly progresses downstage. A tale of love and loss is implied by the chance intersection of her movements with a recorded text, an accumulation of phrases ranging from "A night at the opera" and "a boy leaving home" to "skin tearing" and "bones cracking." In her maturity Bamonte exudes a vulnerability that offers new ways to let the audience in, to let the performance happen.

Two floor-to-ceiling scaffolds across the upstage area provide the backdrop for Bazell's Trapture--a wonderful collision of rapture, capture, and trap--hot themes explored in a postmodern style. Contact lifts, same-gender partnering, acrobatic expertise, heavy breathing (we no longer mask our efforts), and a little club/hip-hop--these are elements of the new norm. Bazell stuffs a magician's share of ideas into this sprawling piece. Some clarity of vision is gained when she chooses unison work for her eleven dancers, especially in scaffolding sections. Conrad Bender's highly effective lighting design is a prime mover here and shapes the bodies that hang, lean, stretch, pull, and bend against the scaffold. The piece has too many dances packed into one, but the performers' passion carried the day.

Bardarson's work is gothic. Wolves howl at the moon (personified by Janet Pilla, one of Philadelphia's finest); bodies lurch, snatch, tear at each other. This work is chock-full of possibilities that remain underdeveloped. Pilla's character turns a corner somewhere midway in the work, and the opportunity to develop the other characters in dialogue with or counter to her is missed.

Rainey used fellow members of Pennsylvania Ballet in two works that explored the dynamics of dysfunctional relationships--what better fuel for juicy choreography? 100 Degrees in the Shade is a send-up of the steamy song "Fever." Rainey and Portia Jones are languid, deenergized, falling over one another--too hot, literally, to get heated up, sexually. In A State of Undress paired Rainey again with Jones due to a last-minute, but fortuitous, program change. The two work excellently together: Jones small, supple, sensuous; Rainey tall, solid, always serious (even when he's fooling around). His specialty in both works was beautiful lifts--not necessarily daring but nonetheless surprising.

At Marah Dance Theatre's The Flying Man, choreographed by Stephen Wynne, is a dance about innovation versus the status quo. This technically stunning company performed choreography shaped by Wynne's years of working with state theaters and ballet companies in Germany and the Netherlands.

Dancefusion presented Pauline Koner's Concertino (1955) and a new work, Colin Connor's Scales of Vertigo. Koner's work landed like a voice echoing from the past, even down to the scratchy rendition of Pergolesi that accompanied it. I wondered: How did it resonate in 1955? What did these four women (led by Gwendolyn Bye, Dancefusion's director) think about it? What bridge(s) did they seek to make it come to life? I could find little to justify blowing the dust off this one, perhaps because my questions were not answered by this performance.

Connor's work had unexplored concepts but strong moments, including a beautiful sequence in which Joseph Cicula runs circles around a table on which Christine Taylor stands. She dives from atop, and he catches her before she falls, again and again. He places her inside a tall, open ladder, suspended by her armpits. Underneath, he descends to the floor. The final image--and sound--is of her legs bicycling the air, and the "swish-swish" sound of her full skirt, responding to this motion.

Two Philadelphia dance events: They typified this city. Philadelphia dances with a sense of tradition, a level of skill, and a regard for good taste.