TRINITY IRISH DANCE.

ONE STEP BEYOND TRINITY IRISH DANCE ARLENE SCHNITZER CONCERT HALL PORTLAND, OREGON MARCH 13-14, 2001

Through silence and stage fog, the highly skilled dancers of Trinity Irish Dance come stepping--high, low, loud, and soft, machine-stitching intricate footwork patterns across the stage of Portland's ersatz European opera house, the Schnitz. Then the music kicks in and the company that started the current craze for Irish step dancing is fully launched in Johnny, named not for some hero of the Irish Troubles but television's Johnny Carson.

No, it isn't Riverdance. It's the Chicago company started by artistic director Mark Howard so that competition champions could continue to dance, making the transition from craft to art in the process. Johnny, choreographed by Howard in 1990, bears all the hallmarks of the competitive folk form, merging tradition with stagecraft.

Lavish traditional costumes, curly-haired wigs, and the dancers' zest in this and Howard's curtain-closing Celtic Thunder showed this young company at their exuberant best. They--and musicians Sean Ryan, Stone and Tony Davoren--are beguiling, irresistible, making you want to join them.

Trinity is certainly about tradition, but in almost equal parts it's about stretching the form and fusing it with other styles. In Treble Jig, company principal Darren Smith, a champion virtuoso if ever there was one, engages in some challenge dancing, hoofer style, with Deirdre Mahoney and Ryan Made Morris.

Modern dancer Sean Curran, who has a background in step dancing, makes a healthy stab at manipulating the strictly codified form with Curran Event, creating considerable arm movement for the dancers--forbidden in competition--and injecting the slaps and beats of African body music into the mix. It's not quite successful: Many of the dancers look ill at ease, except in a section where the women are tough and competent, Charlie's Angels with a revolutionary edge.

The six young women who perform Portland-based choreographer Ashley Roland's O'Reely, to Mozart, no less, have a ball with what amounts to a spoof of the form. Jumping into each other's arms, kicking each other in the rear, they still maintain the required technical precision. A bit broad, a bit cute, O'Reely nevertheless adds a new dynamic.

As does Roland's Hibernia, a slickly crafted, non-narrative piece for three dancers. Michael Curry's pennant-adorned unitards make them resemble sea anemones, with lights by Michael Mazzola suggesting an arctic ocean. Roland's layering of contemporary style and traditional movement looks strangely otherworldly and mystical; she's on to a way of extending the technique to express something else in Irish culture--mysticism and metaphor.