Philadanco's 40th anniversary

Philadanco's 40th anniversary show at the Kimmel's Perelman Theater last week made for a night of happy heinies"“ one of creation's cutest assets. Three of the four works on the program featured swaying, vibrating and bumpin' butts. Even the company's 77-year-old duenna, founder and artistic director, Joan Myers Brown, whom company members often call Aunt Joan, gave her shapely rear a shake.

But the terrific opening number— Danny Ezralow's Pulse, to music by the Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang— put the focus farther down on the anatomy: at the feet. Wearing some sort of slippery footwear (a silk-like sock, I later learned), the dancers exploded from the wings gliding swiftly across the stage one by one, crisscrossing each other, forming and reforming patterns of endless variations. They slid forward in semi-lunge, sideways in half-split, and tossed in a few backward slides before breaking into somersaults or dropping into supine or fetal positions over which the others leapt.

Iridescent sheer costumes and Melody Beal's smoky lighting created a shimmery beauty that made the piece resemble a painting come to vivid life— a real feast for the eyes. After so much gorgeously synthesized interaction, Lamar Baylor brought Pulse to a wistful end in a single lonely spotlight.

Spatting lovers

The program notes say George Faison's Suite Otis was first performed in 1971— and from the looks of the bright orange bell-bottomed costumes, that figures. Suite Otis, originally written for the Alvin Ailey Company, is a perfect vehicle to show off the Philadanco dancers' lighter side. Brandon Glasgow and Chloe O. Davis are adorable as spatting lovers who always make up in a cheek-to-cheek dance with cheeky shake-it-like-Jell-O posteriors, too.

In the program's sole world premiere, Christopher L. Huggins's Bolero Too, the derrière took to swankier swaying in a seductive dance hall atmosphere. Like this year's earlier Le Baison Inévitable, which was set to Bolero by Jodie Gates on BalletX, Huggins's Bolero take ignored the work's inter-war military nuances. But Huggins made light of the sensuality that's so ingrained in the popular psyche when it comes to this music.

A blade on the floor

Odara N. Jabali-Nash, Philadanco's most senior and most expressive dancer, portrays a manipulative woman vexed at not getting her way, exploding across the stage in her leaps. Baylor does some heavy mugging, and Glasgow tangos tongue-in-cheek and later executes some perfect fouetté turns. The men even do "coffee grinders" close to the ground, swinging one leg around like a blade on the floor. Instead of building to a great crescendo, as so many Bolero versions do, this one went against tradition, with the couples languidly drifting back to their seats.

Interestingly, this is the second Ravel piece Philadanco now has in its repertoire. I saw the first, La Valse, in Warsaw in 2001. Dressed in swirling black chiffon, that dance built as maniacally as a war machine. To my surprise, the presumably war-weary Polish audiences loved it.

But the piece the Poles really went wild for was Jawole Willa Jo Zollar's celebration of the Black Power movement, Hand Singing Song, which the program notes described as "Afro-Amerikanow-style Solidarity."

Elegant effect

In this month's program, a Zollar work was again my favorite: The Walkin' Talkin' Signifying Blues Hips, Lowdown, Throwdown "Batty Moves." "Batty" is Jamaican for the rump; and Chloe O. Davis, in a squat, brings up one foot and bent knee, ant-like, and drops it before the other rises, all the while rotating the bull's eye on her fanny wrap to rather elegant effect.

All the Philadanco women and the far end of their lovely God-given anatomies danced in varying colorful costumes that referenced African cultures from Angola to the Caribbean and Zambia. Zollar includes many recognizable "Africanist" moves— rib-pumping torsos, the bent knee folding in and out, hair flying. To call this a fanny finale would not be exaggerating.

The classy Joan Myers Brown, swathed in a sophisticated black sheath that she says she "just pulled from my closet," appeared among her girls in a rare and she says, final, cameo walk-on. She still has the figure of her early days as a nightclub dancer.

Mad about Joan

Full disclosure: I adore Joan. She's one of the greatest, most gracious and dignified women this city has ever known. When I asked her about the walk-on, she replied modestly, "Gotta sell some tickets, you know."

JMB, one of her other affectionate monikers, lives and breathes her company. Her dancers and students come from all over the country, but soon call Philly and her West Philadelphia studio home. She travels the world with them, doing her best to insulate them from racist remarks, lost luggage, late payments. Lately she's searching for ways to keep her company going when she's finally ready to step away, because a Philly without Philadanco would go very dark.