Dance Theater

Fun from JapanChildren can explore the arts of Japan today when Shizumi Dance Theater re-creates folk tales through theaters and dance at the Maryland Historical Society.There will be comedy using masks, costumes and fans, as well as audience participation. Make sure you duck when the sword-fighting starts.The performance is part of the Maryland Historical Society's eighth annual "Imagination Inspiration" performance series, which is aimed at educating children about Maryland's diverse ethnic heritage through storytelling, music, puppetry and dance theater.

* Baltimore Classical Guitar Society, Notre Dame College of Maryland. (410) 247-5320.March 16: Paco De Malaga & the Ana Martinez Dance Company.* Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Museum Drive, at North Charles and 31st streets. (410) 235-0100.Oct. 4: Endowment performances featuring the Moving Company, Kimberly Mackin Dance Company, Tallerico & Company and Chris Dohse/Toothmother; Oct. 15: Spanish Dance Society; in November: Nancy Wanich-Romita, the Moving Company; Nov. 11-12: Eva Anderson Dancers, Ltd.; Nov. 25: Sankofa Dance Theater.

If you want to see truly exceptional, big-name dance this year, you'll have to hop in your car and head south on I-95. Major league dance companies are coming to the area -- such as the Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, the Martha Graham Company or the Jose Limon Company -- but they'll be appearing in Washington.Despite the fact Baltimore is not a required stop for most national companies, it does have a dance scene.Several local dance companies will perform -- in spite of funding problems and inconsistent audience development.

Pilobolus Dance Theater again showed why it has drawn standing-room-only audiences for more than 20 years while performing at Wilde Lake High School at Riverhill as part of the Columbia Festival of the Arts.The New England-based company's Friday night concert was sold out, and the resounding applause proved that these five talented dancers had something for everyone on their program of five works.Opening the evening was "Quatrejeux," a young-as-spring romp with dancers Rebecca Anderson, Adam Battelstein, Rebecca Jung and Darryl Thomas.

Dispatch from the Ideas Combat Zone:This year's fiercest battle has erupted not directly from or in books, but rather from the dance. We are not talking tango. The concept and the controversy run deep into prose and poetry, painting and music, but broke surface in modern dance theater.The war cry is " victim art." You are free to decide who is the victim and who or what may be art.In essence, this is the idea: Can real life be real art?The debate goes deeper: Can a performance that depends for its force on the demonstration of actual human misery legitimately be called art, or is it something else: politics, propaganda, psychotherapy?

Through energetic drumming and carefully choreographed moves, members of the Sankofa Dance Theater bring African-American history to life.On Wednesday, the Baltimore-based cultural arts organization will help commemorate Black History Month by giving a free performance at 7 p.m. at Carroll Community College."

Four years after Baltimore's Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Foundation presented its first performance, members of the cultural community are struggling to find ways to salvage bits of the internationally acclaimed ensemble's presence in Maryland.The foundation, created to bring New York's Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater here for performances and to develop outreach programs including summer dance camps, last month quietly folded -- director-less and in debt.Now, leaders of local arts circles are looking for ways to save the summer camps.

Plagued by financial problems, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Foundation of Maryland, which brought world-class modern dance to Baltimore and introduced thousands of children to dance, has shut down.The foundation's death means the famed New York dance company will no longer perform annually in Baltimore and could end the acclaimed Ailey summer camps for disadvantaged youth at Morgan State and Frostburg State universities."What we found was that the private sector support wasn't available," said Richard Hackney, the foundation's board chairman.

Last weekend's season-opening fall program from the Ballet Theatre of Annapolis was a less-than-gripping affair that made time pass slowly.I'll not dispute that BTA has access to many exceptionally talented dancers whose physical exploits are a pleasure to watch. But from a theatrical perspective -- and we're talking about dance theater after all -- this one was a bit of a snoozer that smacked of unvarying mood, indifferent execution and (I'll just bet) minimal rehearsal time.Facial and anatomical energy seemed muted all night long, and the hell-for-leather elan that marks BTA at its best was just nowhere to be found.

Naohiro Amaya, 68, the vice trade minister who introduced Japan's voluntary controls on automobile exports to solve disputes with the United States in 1979, died of lung cancer Tuesday in Tokyo.Walter Raines, 54, artistic director of the Dance Theater of Harlem's school and a charter member of the company, died Sunday in New York of an AIDS-related illness. He danced with the Pennsylvania and Stuttgart ballets before joining the new Dance Theater of Harlem in 1969. After he stopped dancing, he joined the faculty of the City University of New York and served as chairman of the ballet department of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center.