Choreographer

When a great modern-dance choreographer creates a solo for herself, it's like a writer turning from novel to short story. The materials and the method are the same, but the result is more concentrated, polished and personal.And the great modern dancers -- who were, by and large, American women -- all began working out their signature styles by creating work for their singular bodies.That's one point "Tribute to the Solo," at the Kennedy Center tomorrow through Thursday, is trying to make.

Washington Ballet faces an enormous transition this year as founder Mary Day, grande dame of dance in the D.C. area, steps down as its artistic director. But from the look of things on stage, which remain stylish and sophisticated, you'd scarcely know anything but dance was on the troupe's mind.Its final program of the season, next week at the Kennedy Center, features a new work by Polish guest choreographer Krzysztof Pastor. As yet untitled, it is set to cello music of Bach, George Crumb and Zoltan Kodaly.

Not that it matters to anyone but purists in these days of amplified everything, but the thunder of tapping feet you'll hear at "Riverdance" (Dec. 1-20, Lyric Opera House) and "Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance" (May 4-9, Lyric Opera House) does not come entirely from the dancers. It doesn't even come from the microphones.According to a recent item in the Periscope section of Newsweek, the producers of "River- dance" finally have admitted that the taps are augmented by prerecorded sound.

As ballet lore has it, George Balanchine clapped his hands for attention at the end of class one day in 1934. "Mmmm," he said to his students. "I think we'll start something."That "something" was the ballet called "Serenade." As the title suggests, it's a nocturne, a song to the night, hushed and ephemeral as moonlight. It is also a masterpiece."Serenade" was the first ballet the Russian-born Balanchine made in America and also the first major abstract ballet in dance history. Intended as a teaching piece, it is today in the repertory of every major ballet company in the world.

Once again, Kinetics Dance Theatre has reinvented itself. Since last August, choreographer Anne-Alex Packard has held the artistic reins for the Howard County-based dance company. The company's recent debut performance at the Baltimore Museum of Art demonstrated that Packard has friends in high places willing to help the choreographer put her best foot forward.Kinetics' newly reconstituted company of eight women relied heartily on guest artists to pull the performance together. Overall, this established a rocky sense of accomplishment with Packard's dances almost lost in the shuffle of personalities.

WASHINGTON -- "Savannah," which will receive its premiere Wednesday at the Kennedy Center, is not about the city in Georgia. Its choreographer, Ntsikelelo "Boyzie" Cekwana, is from South Africa, and his piece is inspired by the great grasslands of Africa.The Washington Ballet and the Kennedy Center have co-commissioned the work from the 27-year-old Cekwana -- whose name is pronounced Sechwana, rather like the Chinese province -- as part of the dance company's 20th-anniversary season and the center's African Odyssey festival.

NEW YORK -- As a dancer, Ann Reinking broke out of "the Fosse clump." As a choreographer, she's keeping the clump together.The clump was a trademark of the late Bob Fosse's choreography. It consisted of dancers oozing across the stage as one, amoeba-like entity.Reinking, a personal as well as professional protege of Fosse's, was one of his favored soloists. Before being sidelined with a back injury last month, she demonstrated what set her apart from the clump by starring in the hit Broadway revival of "Chicago," a musical Fosse directed, choreographed and co-wrote in 1975.

Towson State University's dance company will celebrate its 25th anniversary this weekend with a gala program that goes -- choreographically speaking -- all over the map.Consider the featured works: "Panorama," a 1935 abstract dance for 33 women by Martha Graham, and the classic 19th century ballet blanc "Les Sylphides," to music of Chopin."

Mary Day, artistic director and founder of the Washington Ballet, is a woman of courage and optimism. In the ballet world, premieres are risky business, and her company's program of three world premieres proves her daring.Opening the program was resident choreographer Lynn Cote's "Interlacing," a dance that displayed Cote's lighter side and distinct choreographic growth. The highlight was a sunny, cleanly danced quartet featuring company members Tristi McMaster, Heather Perry, Chip Coleman and Jani Talo.

At first thought, the scheduling of the Mark Morris Dance Group at the Naval Academy's Alumni Hall this past weekend seemed an odd booking. But the four works presented by the full-bodied choreographer and his entourage of 14 dancers and small ensemble of musicians and singers proved that modern dance can be entertainment as well as serious art.Morris opened the evening with "Love Song Waltzes" accompanied by Johannes Brahms' "Liebesliederwalzer OP50."...

The Ballet Theatre of Maryland closed its 2007-2008 season last weekend with memorable performances from the entire company in a new major work honoring an Annapolis ballet teacher. Dancers were also at the top of their form in preceding selections that included Italian Symphonette, a work choreographed earlier by Dianna Cuatto, and her Tango Dramatico, requested by four principal dancers: Bryan Skates, his wife, Jamie Skates, and principal dancers Alexis Decker and Christi Bleakly. Wherever these dancers appeared, they set higher standards than before, giving cause to celebrate along with the bittersweet realization that we will no longer be able to see their magic.

No one would blame you if you couldn't see the overarching theme that binds the pieces of the Collective dance company's annual concert together. The Baltimore-based troupe explores the topic of transitions from wildly varying angles, including traffic and terminal illness. "I think that it's really a journey of a show," said director/choreographer Jessica Fultz. "Every piece is so different from the one before or after." The Collective: Moving Through Transitions, which takes place Saturday at the Baltimore Museum of Art, features eight pieces, including five world premieres.

Trust Shen Wei, a MacArthur Award-winning choreographer, to elevate finger-painting -- and foot-painting and shin-painting and bicep-painting -- into an art form. In Connect Transfer, to be performed next month at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, dancers dip their limbs into paint and slide across the white cloth-covered floor, transforming the stage into a giant canvas. The piece combines elements of child's play with a serious meditation on the nature of movement. In the eight years since founding his own troupe, Shen Wei Dance Arts, the 38-year-old New York resident has been lauded as one of the most promising choreographers of his generation.

Circuses and kids, dancing and singing: That's what has led to the revival of Barnum, the Circus Musical on community stages. It's opening today at the Talent Machine in Annapolis, where the talent is teenagers. The lead performer, Kory Kinney as P.T. Barnum, is 16. With its circus theme, the 1980 Tony Award-winning musical Barnum seems to be an ideal vehicle for a cast ages 14 to 18, which danced, clowned and tumbled during a recent rehearsal. For this show, cast members were also getting "lessons in fire eating and stilt walking from Talent Machine alumni," said Lea Capps, daughter of TM founder Bobbi Smith.

Despite its name, the "we" turn was one man's inspiration. Scott Grossman conceived of it alone last week in the hallways of River Hill High School in Clarksville, where he had quietly extracted himself from the company of 51 shimmying Miss USA 2005 contestants. The pageant choreographer was having "a breakdown moment," but not in the good, "break it down!" dancing kind of way. He was in crisis mode. Something was terribly awry with the swimsuit parade, but what? "I knew there needed to be a turn, but very soft," he said.

A Terry Teachout Reader, by Terry Teachout. Yale University Press. 438 pages. $35. In 1977, at the tender age of 21, the Missouri-born Terry Teachout was reviewing concerts for The Kansas City Star, still working on the IBM Selectric typewriter that was a staple for those of us who were journalists then. Music may have been Teachout's first critical romance (he was himself a jazz bassist in Kansas City, one of the nation's great jazz towns), but dance, movies, TV and books soon followed as he moved to New York and "set up shop as a critic-for-hire," as he describes it in his introduction to A Terry Teachout Reader.

Dance teacher and choreographer Vicki Smith has a mission to get everybody in Anne Arundel County from age 3 to 93 who might want to dance to start now. This petite dynamo has found a slot in her packed schedule where she can concentrate her efforts on recruiting dancers older than age 55. Smith has intensified her teaching efforts since the death in 2001 of her sister Bobbi Smith, Talent Machine Company's founder and a gifted choreographer, whose skills...

Can't dance. Can't strip. Must act. That's a shorthand description of what choreographer Jerry Mitchell was looking for in casting the Broadway musical The Full Monty. After all, the show, based on the 1997 British sleeper hit movie, is about a half-dozen unemployed steelworkers who put on a strip show to raise some cash. They're hardly Broadway hoofers, or the Chippendales, for that matter. (The touring production of The Full Monty opens a one-week run at the Mechanic Theatre on Tuesday.

Ballet Theatre of Maryland plans an exciting program of dance for April 12 and 13 at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. Live music will accompany each ballet segment, "Bagatelles," "The Rite of Spring" and "Postcard from Vienna." Choreographer Alex Ossadnik, 34, calls his program "a menu of ballets with a Bagatelle appetizer to tease, a substantial Stravinsky entree, and a rich creamy Viennese dessert to end the dinner." Voicing his preference for live music, Ossadnik said, "Dancing to live music instead of a recording is like having a fresh-cooked meal over one that is microwaved, where art simply doesn't happen."

Baltimore-born director / choreographer Martha Clarke's Vienna: Lusthaus (revisited) opens a one-week run at Washington's Kennedy Center on Tuesday. Winner of a 1986 Obie Award, the show is set in early 20th century Vienna and uses music (by Richard Peaslee), text (by Charles L. Mee), dance and imagery (suggested by the work of Viennese painters Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt) to depict a society on the verge of dissolution. Seen in its original incarnation at the Kennedy Center in 1986, the work was an eerie, dream-like intermingling of sexuality and war, Freud and Hitler.