Z.(Teatro Municipal, Sao Paulo, Brazil)

What would be the result of a collaboration between a ballet company and an African choreographer whose technique inverts classical concepts? Germaine Acogny's Z, produced by the City of Sao Paulo Ballet, the company housed in the Municipal Theater in the financial heart of Brazil, has revealed the answer.

Founded twenty-eight years ago, Bale de Cidade de Sao Paulo originally featured a purely classical repertoire. Since the midseventies, however, it has turned to more contemporary works. Today it boasts an ensemble that is anchored in classical technique yet extremely versatile and eager for new experience. The company was primed to make the most of its work with Acogny, the Senegalese choreographer seen as the first lady of modern African dance. Acogny is well respected in Europe, where Maurice Bejart considers her his African "double." Uniting traditional and modern elements, she has developed a technique of her own which values the torso's fluidity above feet well rooted in the ground. "It is often said that classical ballet is the base. In my opinion, it is African dance that offers the basic precepts, since it respects the body without distorting it," says the choreographer.

Z is about Zumbi, a renowned black Brazilian leader who lived at the end of the seventeenth century. In addition to Acogny, Bale de Cidade had a special collaborator in composer Gilberto Gil, one of the most popular personalities in Brazilian pop music. Together with two other musicians, Carlinhos Brown and Rodolfo Stroeter, Gil developed a piece that is basically percussive, bringing ancient rhythms to modern sounds. Often the dancers create sound by beating their hands against their own bodies. Acogny also tried to break down barriers in her search for choreography that would integrate different techniques.

Acogny turns Zumbi, a protector of runaway slaves, into a universal character representing freedom; there are no solos, only group dances. In the first part of the production, as the music praises the harmony between heaven and earth, the cosmos and humankind, three men--one black, one white, and one of mixed blood--effectively symbolize the union of races. Z suffers, however, from a lack of articulation between its five different scenes. More cohesion might enhance the work's promotion of dialogue among different languages. Instead, the creators lose momentum going from scene to scene.

Without leaving behind their classical skills, the dancers gave their own interpretation of Acogny's technique. In Z, her close-to-the-floor, gravity-bound movement is performed by ballet dancers, with the resulting hybrid a pleasing mix. Bale de Cidade has no doubt gained a great deal from this work, an experience which will leave it more skillful in the art of interpreting the different languages of modern dance.