Riffing and jamming with Savage Jazz.

If you want excellent advice on how to become a a dancer--and survive as a dancer--Reginald Ray-Savage, 44, will give it to you. The outspoken artistic director of Berkeley, California-based Savage Jazz, one of a handful of concert jazz dance companies in the country, has spent more than a decade training dancers with a tough-love approach. [] If you want your advice sugarcoated, you should try someone else. If a dancer wants to, say, study in New York and Savage doesn't think she's ready, he'll tell her so. "People get mad and say I'm not encouraging. But why should I co-sign their fantasy?" Savage says. "Recent generations of dancers have been taught to seek validation," he says, "not confrontation, not evaluation. One of the hardest things I do is to convince young people that they'll never get back even one percent of what they put into dance. You won't get a big check. Not much recognition. There are only twelve Dance Magazine covers a year and eight of those are going to be about ballet."

Even more than harsh realism, Savage believes in and teaches the ethic of hard work. Frances Rosario-Pott, now a six-year veteran of Savage Jazz, says, "A teacher in Sacramento told a bunch of us dance majors at UC Davis, `You've got to take from this cat. He's bad ass,'" Her early classes with Savage were terrifying. "But if you want to learn, he'll take you at your word and push you, no matter who you are."

Indeed, Savage seems to attract pupils who can withstand his heat and pressure--even thrive in it. His company is made up of six razor-sharp, devoted, and disciplined women and five apprentices, most of whom have trained with Savage for years. Some of his students now dance with Oakland Ballet, Garth Fagan Dance, Dallas Black Dance Company, and Philadanco. And some have gone on to study at The Ailey School, North Carolina School of the Arts, and the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance--pretty illustrious success stories for what's essentially a one-man training program.

Those who endure Savage's tough love as a teacher can take solace in the fact that his early dance years were far from an easy waltz. In fact, he says his students have it easier. "At least I use humor in class," he says, "My teachers never did." He caught the dance bug at the age of 18 when a girlfriend took him to see Nureyev and Friends on tour in their hometown of St. Louis. More of a football fan than ballet devotee, he didn't want to go. But he found the performance so transfixing that he broke his next date with the girl to attend the show again. A few weeks later, he saw the Dunham company performing in a park. Before long he was taking classes at Katherine Dunham's Performing Arts Training Center in East St. Louis, Illinois.

"I was so bad when I started," he laughs. "I was so tight. I couldn't even touch my knees! I thought `step ball change' was some code language I'd never get." Norman Davis, a Dunham company alumnus and jazz teacher at the school, had little patience with Savage. "Norman would literally take me by the tights and throw me out of class," says Savage. "Class would go on and I'd have my face pressed up against this window that looked in. Then I'd show up the next day." Twenty minutes into class, he'd find himself thrown out again. The setbacks only built his determination. In less than four years, he was dancing with the Dunham company, and he counts Davis among his most influential teachers. Lenwood Morris, his first ballet teacher and another Dunham dancer, was another major inspiration with an equally fiery temper.

It was also at Dunham's school that Savage met his mentor and namesake, Archie Savage, who danced with Dunham and performed in Hollywood films. "I met Archie when he was 67 and he was still doing these beautiful splits," says Savage. "He was so laid back, worldly, and dignified. He was an inspiration of how to live." In homage to Archie, Savage decided to add his mentor's name to his own when he joined the actors' union. "Archie fell in love with the idea," says Savage. "And I've spent the rest of my life trying to be a quarter of the gentleman he is."

After Dunham, Savage made his way to Chicago, where he eventually performed with the Joel Hall Dance Company and in Ruth Page's Nutcracker. When he first landed in the city, he got a scholarship at Page's school, where he studied with ballet teacher Larry Long. "Later, when I was leaving, Long told me that I hadn't been his best dancer but that no one worked harder. And that's my rap," says Savage. "Hard work was a lesson I learned from Dunham. Everyone there was poor. So she taught us to make the most of everything we had. In Chicago, I'd take four or five classes a day. There were these myths that grew up around my work ethic. People would say I had to walk ten miles, uphill, in the snow to class. Actually, some of that is true because back then I only had enough money to take the train one way."

After about ten years of professional life, which included tours with The Music Man and A Chorus Line, Savage came to California with a girlfriend. The relationship didn't stick but his sojourn in the state looks permanent. There's his company, and in March he married Zafra Miriam, associate artistic director of Savage Jazz and a jazz teacher at Berkeley's Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, where Savage's classes meet seven days a week.

Savage's company celebrates its tenth anniversary in October. But during his years of professional performing he never expected to launch a jazz ensemble. Though he danced with Joel Hall's jazz company in Chicago, back then ballet was his primary interest. "I guess Norman and Joel put a bug in my head," he says. "But it was really reading about jazz musicians that lead me to want to choreograph to jazz music." And he hasn't left ballet completely behind. His choreography is a unique blend of all his influences, and the classical training that undergirds it is evident. He also lets the music drive the movement in surprising new directions. "When you start studying jazz as a musician, you begin as if you're going to study classical piano. Eventually, after many years, you play the jazz that's in you. I have the same respect for dance technique.

"A while back a critic wrote that I should go back to my African roots," he says. "I just had to laugh because we were dancing to Ellington's Far East Suite. `Suite' implies that Ellington wanted you to hear the music in a certain way. It's not written for the club scene. My use of the music was made to go with what he wrote. Ellington used to get similar reviews. In Europe you find Ellington in the classical music section. Not here. I don't think it's intentional, but there's this absentminded racism. People say I don't do black dance. But I'm the choreographer. I'm black. I do black dance. They've even said my company would be better if I just used black dancers. They've said that! I couldn't believe it. I just use good dancers."

Savage says it has taken time to become confident as a choreographer. But in 1998 his company took a bold new leap: It began performing to the live music of the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, Quintet, or Trio. The music added a new dimension to his work and presented extra challenges for his dancers.

The first time Savage Jazz worked with Shelby they almost lost the drummer before they began. "The minute he heard we'd been working with the CD, he started packing up his stuff," says Savage. Recreating a previous performance was an absolute anathema to him, as it would be to many jazz musicians. Improvisational freedom lies at the very heart of jazz. But for a dancer used to entering on a particular horn wail and moving for a set amount of counts, a sax solo that's different every night can be disconcerting. Nonetheless, Savage caught the drummer before he left and assured him that he could just play. The dancers would make the adjustments.

"I treat jazz music the same way Balanchine treated Stravinsky's [preexisting works]," he says. Sometimes the Russian artists worked collaboratively. But if Balanchine used a previously composed Stravinsky piece, he always respected the composer's set tempo. "If we're using a piece by Dave Brubeck and he wrote it in fast sevens, that's what we dance to," says Savage. "I don't care how hard it is. And improvisation is a part of the music. It has to be there."

Savage feels his unshakable respect for jazz music is rare among jazz dance artists. "The image of jazz has been shaped by a few, mostly white, choreographers," he says. And few of them have dealt with jazz music. I love Bob Fosse, Michael Kidd, Jack Cole--but you won't find a Fosse piece to Ellington and there's no Kidd ballet to [the late bassist and composer Charles] Mingus."

Savage's commitment to the music and its improvisational nature means his dancers must make quick decisions mid-performance. "As the curtain goes up, you're thinking, `Oh my God. What's going to happen?'" says Rosario-Pott. "But we've learned how to listen to jazz. You learn the structure of the piece and you listen for the changes."

And when a section is twenty eights longer than expected, you improvise, says Alison Hurley, a Savage dancer since 1995. "If a dancer's solo is going really long and she's exhausted, a couple of us in the wings will enter and do a section together to save her."

When ensemble sections have extra music, things get more challenging. "We talk to each other onstage," says Rosario-Pott. "And there are leaders. Some people are really good at hearing the theme or sensing when the musician is getting to an end. We have to be constantly open and watching."

Savage loves this in-the-moment creativity. He says it keeps the performances alive and fresh. "My dancers have gone live for the last four years and now it's a great source of pride to them. There are moments when a dancer and musician go offstage screaming and hollering about how they connected on some higher plane," he says. Savage's intense focus on the dancers and the musicians has led him to take a minimalist approach to other aspects of his work. "All I care about is the music and the movement," he says. "My lighting directions are just `turn 'em on, turn 'em off.' My board says we've got to have costumes, so we do. But in a jazz concert Miles Davis didn't change suits. I'm looking for that sort of simplicity."

AT A GLANCE

Savage Jazz Dance Company 530 East Eighth Street #202 Oakland, CA 94606 510/496-6068 (phone and fax) www.savagejazz.org [e-mail]

Artistic Director: Reginald Ray-Savage

Associate Artistic Director: Zafra Miriam

Company Manager: Stephanie Ludvik

SAVAGE JAZZ DANCE COMPANY, FOUNDED IN 1992 by Artistic Director Reginald Ray-Savage, integrates jazz music with dance. Its repertoire of more than 100 works by Ray-Savage is set to the works of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus, and Marcus Shelby.

The company's movement style, For which Ray-Savage received a Creative Artists Fellowship in Choreography From the City of Oakland in 1993, combines contemporary dance, jazz dance, Dunham technique, and ballet. Savage Jazz dancers learn to improvise within the framework of the choreography.

* 6 dancers, 5 apprentices

* 10-month contract, part-time pay

* Non-union company

* Dancers' ages range from 18 to 30.

* Auditions: By taking Ray-Savage's intermediate/advanced class at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz Avenue, Berkeley, California, or at Citicentre Dance Theatre, 1428 Alice Street, Oakland, California 

* Venues: The Alice Arts Center in Oakland and the Cowell Theater in San Francisco, California 

* Music: Often live, by Marcus Shelby' Trio, Quintet, and Orchestra

* Touring: Includes performances, master classes, and lecture-demonstrations in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas

* No official school, but classes are offered at the Shawl-Anderson Dance Center and Citicentre Dance Theatre. An annual summer intensive For teens and pre-professional dancers is held at Shawl-Anderson (510/654-5921).

Company members pictured: Reginald Ray-Savage (in white, long-sleeved shirt) with Phillip Bandel, Keiron Bone, Emily Butts, Selena Chau, Jennifer Gorman, Zianee Hunter, Alison Hurley, Jessica Polsky, Frances Rosario-Pott, Elizabeth Sherman, and Mia Aiko Yamada, with Marcus Shelby musicians.

Associate Editor Janet Weeks fields dance news from around the world and dances with a liturgical dance company and two modern dance companies.