American game-changers: Smith and Brown

Choreography and religious conviction do not often serve each other, but when they do - as with Russian émigré George Balanchine or, more recently, Brooklyn native Ronald K. Brown - unorthodox wonders abound. These choreographers let spirit loose from dogma; Brown does so by endowing his humane, hopeful conception of struggle and salvation with a textured, evocative specificity. 

In the first of two programmes this week for Brown's 10-member ensemble, Evidence, the "gatekeepers" in the dance of the same name do not guard Heaven so much as ready the ground (or is it the clouds?) for us. To Wunmi's plaintive voice above aqueous dance music, the dancers encircled the stage - caressing the floor with every step - to clear it of danger. They pointed arrow-straight arms like compass needles. More strange and wonderful, they seemed to trace with their fingertips the pattern of raindrops on a windowpane and volley a falling cloud back into the sky. The movement was deliberate yet soft. The sparks of association were constant without being insistent. Poetic logic, not compulsion, drove the flow of images.

  Dancers Annique Roberts and Arcell Cabuag. Photo by Ayodele Casel courtesy of Evidence. 

 Brown shares with West African indigenous dance the rolling hips, pumping knees, relaxed feet, wide, grounded stance and residues of story, but his textures are more varied and his meanings richer in ambiguity. Evidence's gloriously eclectic bodies stretch the interpretative range even further and, in the troupe's very inclusiveness, make the dances' spiritual seeking feel genuine and worth cherishing.