National. - Peter Pan - Hamlet - Dance Salad - Strange Humors - Rhythm Is Our Voice - Night of a Dancer - 180 degrees - dance review

Rambert Dance Company's Paul Liburd did honor to both his company and choreographer, Christopher Bruce, with his highly controlled performance in Hurricane, a moving solo to Bob Dylan's ballad of the same title. In this U.S. premiere, Liburd played a boxer brought down by racism in a piece that reminded us why Bruce is such a major force in contemporary dance.

The Norwegian National Ballet brought a beautiful and sensual pas from Jean Grand-Maitre's Exilium, danced exquisitely by Ingrid Lorentzen and Ole-Willy Falkhaugen, and Jiri Kylian's pas from Heart's Labyrinth.

Henderek juxtaposed the serious and dark Kylian and Guangdong works with lighter treats such as Roxanne Butterfly's Rhythm Is Our Voice (which pitted tap against Bernice Brooks's drums and Sue Terry's wailing sax), and Rebecca Stenn's darting imitation of a lizard. Stenn, easily recognizable as a former Pilobolus and MOMIX dancer, gave a more-than-credible performance in her Iguana, which also used Brooks and Jay Weissman on bass.

The local team, Houston Ballet, contributed Uncommon Valour, a dramatic wartime trio by Timothy O' Keefe.

Robert Battle, in a dance that almost wasn't, used two members of Battleworks in his Strange Humors. The male duet of drunk or vodoun-possessed dancers undulating to John Mackey's music was vivid, visceral, and strangely funny. The five-minute work received the loudest ovation.

This year's event also included master classes and community projects along with the three nights of dance. Henderek claims the event has a "life of its own," and isn't sure how it will evolve. But if this year is any indication, it could wind up as the premier contemporary dance festival between the East and West Coasts.

How High Can You Fly?

Sky Dancers Dance Mission Theater San Francisco, California March 22-April 7, 2002 Reviewed by Ann Murphy

The aerial dance festival "Sky Dancers" began in a narrow alleyway outside the theater. As the show got under way, the night air smelled of hamburgers, coffee, and falafel, and the crowd stood three deep in the slim space. Neighbors craned their necks out bay windows, cars rolled to a stop, and passersby halted to see the mysterious bodies of Amelia Rudolph's troupe vaulting from fire escape to brick wall and back again.

Thirty years ago choreographers like Trisha Brown and Twyla Tharp asked their dancers to slip down the face of buildings, march through parking lots, or make signs to one another on rooftops in Manhattan. In that spirit "Sky Dancers" brought together performers who ranged from straight-up trapeze artists to haunting dance ensembles in harnesses and soloists on swings, curated by the indomitable Krissy Keefer of Dance Brigade.

During the 1960s, when new modern dance was diametrically opposed not only to ballet but to traditional modern dance, Tharp, Brown, and their colleagues mixed aspects of street drama with new minimalist ideas about dance. Artists tore open the walls of even the wide-open loft space, seeking freedom from the rigid boundaries of the proscenium, and said, "Here, dance can be anywhere you look; choreography is wherever movement is."