Dancers

College dance concerts are always a fun place for brushing up on modern currents in the art, but spring semester programs are often a pure delight. They represent the culmination of eight months' work for student dancers who relish the opportunity to show off what they've learned. The Arts Collective Dance Company at Howard Community College will showcase their many talented dancers in four concerts at HCC's Smith Theatre Thursday-Sunday, March 1-4. "This is our sixth season and the best program so far," said Renee Brozic Barger, the director of the Arts Collective Dance Company.

So, tonight we find out who's making it into next week's finale! (It's also the 300th episode of "Dancing with the Stars. ") And this is the next to last results show I'll ever recap, given the announcement that in the fall, there will no longer be a separate results show . I'm not feeling good about that, but we'll see. The show starts with five pro couples in a routine and then they're joined by five more couples. In case you had any doubt who the stars of this show really are, Derek Hough and Mark Ballas are choreographed at the front of the dancers during an extended section of the number.

Five way-cool dudes, fedoras lowered to their eyebrows, shuffle in sync onto the dance floor as the theme from "Mission: Impossible" blares. After several impressive leaps and splits, they step dance and clap with military precision, then file into a straight line. Marching in place, they form the letters B-A-S-A-C with their arms and finish their dance with a thunderous cheer. "Diagnosis: Dance Abilities!" the quintet yells in unison. These guys, all participants in The League for People with Disabilities Career Services program, have often heard much different assessments of their abilities.

The Harford Ballet Company, resident company of the Dance Conservatory of Maryland, is headlining its spring production with "Beauty and the Beast. " Featuring local Harford County students, the performances will take place June 8 at 6 p.m. and June 9 at 1 p.m. at Bel Air High School. The performance will open with Harford Ballet Company, joined by students from the Dance Conservatory of Maryland, in a mixed bill performance featuring DCM's recreational dance forms. Harford Ballet Company will also be presenting the world premier of "Smells Like Teen Spirit.

When Savion Glover isn't redefining the art of tap-dancing, he slips the most famous feet in show business into size 12 1/2 Jordans or boots. Filling that footwear would be a tall order for anyone else, because nobody in millennial dance so dominates any style or idiom as definitively as Glover dominates tap. At 31, he's the acknowledged master - the summation of tap's past, the torchbearer for its future - with no real rivals on the horizon, but plenty...

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 Towson Ensemble Dancers (TED), the dance collective at Towson State University, gave a remarkably solid program of works over the weekend at Stephens Hall Theatre. The seven dances created by TED members stood shoulder to shoulder with guest choreographer Marcus Schulkind's work, "Ladies Night Out.""Ladies Night Out" was a demanding piece that relied heavily on strong technique and the emotional range of its dancers. Three solos, expertly danced by Dana J. Martin, Nancy Wanich-Romida and Amanda Thom Woodson, peeled back Mr. Schulkind's classically attuned movements to expose the raw and angry psyche of the three women.

The performance that was most fun to see last weekend during the fifth annual Columbia Festival of the Arts had to be Momix at Wilde Lake High School. This company of three women and two men is the brainchild of Pilobus' co-creator and hyper-creative personality Moses Pendleton.Momix is a company of illusionists. Each dancer stretches the limits of physicality -- whether by sheer strength, solid balance or amazing fluidity of movements. Company members Cynthia Quinn, Rebecca Stenn, Annie Way, Jim Cappelletti and Karl Baaumann seem more than human.

Rhythm, a primal building-block of dance, linked the works of Eva Anderson Dancers' program this weekend at the Baltimore Museum of Art.The idea was laudable; the execution, if not quite up to the concept, at least good enough to see what the company can do.Now entering its 23rd season, Anderson's Columbia-based troupe has a modern-dance style blended with African-American music, themes and designs."

The Columbia Festival of the Arts officially opened its 11-day affair last night with a performance from Alvin Ailey's American Dance Theater.Opening the program of three dances was "The Stack Up," by Talley Batty. This street smart work for 17 dancers is as pumped-up as fancy foot gear. Mr. Talley's piece is populated with familiar urban characters -- "cool" dudes, street corner goof-offs, loose women and everyday people all in a whirring blend of dance styles. Indeed, each style characterizes the dancer's roles.

The activities room on the far side of Lutherville Laboratory Elementary School on York Road is full of jazz dancers dressed in black leggings and tank tops on a recent Wednesday afternoon. The room smells of team spirit, the beat of the music races through the floor up to my chest. The dancers are under the instruction of Brittany Brothers, graduate of Towson University, and her assistant, Morgan Colburn , a senior at Maryvale High School. Brothers and Coleburn are just two of about 15 dance staff with the Lutherville Timonium Recreation Council Tap/Jazz program.

Pinkies up! St. Stephen's Traditional Episcopal Church in Timonium is hosting its 12th annual British Garden Party and Fete on Saturday, May 4 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free, even though it costs St. Stephen's nearly  $4,000 each year to present this "bit of Jolly Olde England," as the church bills it. "It's really a gift to the community," the Rev. Guy Hawtin said. "It's not really a money-making venture - the goal is to break even. One year we cleared $50 profit.

If there is a single work that captures the essence of America in sound and movement, it's "Appalachian Spring," the ballet with music by Aaron Copland and choreography by Martha Graham that premiered in 1944 at the Library of Congress. Although the sonic part of the piece is never out of earshot, thanks to the perennially performed orchestral suite Copland fashioned from the score, the opportunity to experience the music and dance in its original form doesn't come around every day. Since last fall, students at the Baltimore School for the Arts have been delving into the ballet from every angle, preparing for "An Appalachian Spring Festival," an interdisciplinary project that includes an art exhibit, a concert and panel discussions.

The exhibit "Arcane Convergence" brings together two artists whose shared abstract orientation merits the show's title. Fortunately, Linda Trope and Adam Zynger both create artwork that is easy to approach at the Bernice Kish Gallery at Slayton House. Trope's mixed media works on paper actually do incorporate representational figures and recognizable landscapes, but they're so spare and stylized that you should not expect anything specific by way of biography and geography. Instead, you'll constantly encounter lithe dancers whose gently curving bodies and limbs are painted with such zestfully assertive colors as pink and purple.

With her latest production, Annapolis Shakespeare Company founder and artistic director Sally Boyett-D'Angelo is expanding the young company's horizons, both artistically and physically. At a recent rehearsal of Jon Jory's adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," Boyett-D'Angelo announced the company will soon move to recently acquired space for rehearsals, offices, a costume shop and a performance studio, at 111 Chinquapin Round Road. It's the latest advancement under Boyett-D'Angelo's guidance.

Jacoby Jones will get an even wider repertoire of moves, Kristin Stewart has recapped the role of the clumsy mumbler, and tweeps dislike Seth MacFarlane. Welcome to your post-weekend online trends report for Feb 25. Ravens wide receiver Jones will be a contestant on 'Dancing With the Stars,' ABC has announced. That came during the commercial break from another big traffic recipient: The Oscar presentations last night drove almost every remaining popular search over the weekend, including Stewart, who presented with Daniel Radcliffe despite a lower body injury.

The 22nd annual Towson State University Dance Company performance opened Friday night with a generous program of dances designed to showcase the diverse talents of Towson students. TSU's dance program is obviously a popular one, judging from the number of student participants who demonstrated their capabilities in modern, classical ballet, jazz and tap dancing as well as choreography.Three of 11 dances choreographed by guest artists, students and faculty members were strictly classical ballet offerings.

Kinetics Dance Theatre, under the artistic direction of Alvin Mayes, premiered three works during the company's spirited performance last weekend at the Howard County Center for the Arts.Mr. Mayes, new to this job, closed the evening of seven dances with his latest, "Zooming," an abstract and buoyant work for nine dancers to the fanciful saxophone of Lenny Pickett. With its erratic and whimsical walks and stop-and-go dynamics, "Zooming" gave the company the chance to show just how well it is shaping up -- technically as well as choreographically.

Dancing figures are the center of attention in many of the paintings in Trudy Babchak's exhibit "Motion/Emotion" at Howard Community College. Indeed, there's really nothing else in the paintings to draw your attention away from these moving female dancers. You sense this painter's approach to figuration as soon as you walk into the show. "The Dance" has a figure in a flowing dress who's essentially caught in motion. You can't really say anything about her personality, because this tightly cropped image only shows her face from about the nose down; and you don't see the full extent of her outstretched arms.

A world-class ice dancer from Clarksville has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors in connection with allegations that he sexually abused a 16-year-old girl in Lake Placid, N.Y. Genrikh Sretenski, 50, a Russian-born former Olympic competitor, pleaded guilty in January to third-degree assault and endangering the welfare of a child, according to his defense attorney Terence L. Kindlon. Under terms of the plea deal in courts in Essex County and Lake Placid Village, N.Y., he was fined, given a one-year conditional release and ordered to stay away from the teenager, according to an email from Essex County, N.Y., prosecutors.