The Higher Power Of Dance

Brooklyn-born and -based choreographer Ronald K. Brown is a rarity in the contemporary dance world: His dances deal with godly matters. "Heaven/Home," "Grace," "Redemption" and "Come Ye," to name a few of his repertory works, reveal that Brown has no qualms about inviting his Christian faith into the dance. Brown returns to Wolf Trap on Tuesday with seven dancers from Evidence, his company, for the world premiere of his latest work, "For Truth," a sweeping, near-rapturous undertaking about faith and servitude that brings together Brown's dancers with 16 others from Philadanco, Philadelphia's premiere modern dance troupe.

The program also will feature Brown in a solo, "Better Days," his faith-based "Come Ye" and Philadanco performing choreographer George Faison's "Suite Otis" -- a tribute to Otis Redding -- and Christopher Huggins's edgy "Enemy Behind the Gates."

"In the contemporary dance world, it feels like it's not okay to really dance about God," Brown said last week from his Brooklyn office, which sits mere blocks from where he grew up. "Liturgical dance has become more and more popular, but there are only certain churches that you can even dance in," he explains, recalling his youth, when he attended his great uncle's Pentecostal church, Trinity Zion, on Fulton Street. There, rules about what to wear, about what music was appropriate and of, course, about not dancing dominated the worship services.

But Brown tells of an epiphany years ago as a second-grader. "I went to see the [Alvin] Ailey company do 'Revelations', and I came home and I made a dance to the Nikki Giovanni poem 'My Father's House.' " Since that personal revelation, Brown has been a firm believer in the higher power of dance. Today, 20 years after founding Evidence as a 19-year-old, he still strives to carve a faithful path in the dance world. "My work," he says, "feels like a god-like construction, a god-like idea."

And it is. "For Truth," which Wolf Trap commissioned, is a triptych. Its first part, "Your Steps Have Been Ordered," features the Evidence dancers in what Brown describes as "the stumbling part of your life." Choreographically Brown fuses movement techniques and styles from modern and African dance, street and club dancing in an athletic display of hardship and quest. In Philadanco's "The Chosen," Brown says the dancers fill the space on stage with "the understanding that you have been chosen." Ultimately, the two companies join to Nigerian composer Femi Kuti's "Truth Don Die."

Reflecting on his company's name, Brown says, "The idea . . . was that when we step into the world to work, we have to walk and work with this sense of accountability and this sense of responsibility. To all the people who have invested in us -- our families, our community, our teachers, our ancestors, the people who have made youth exist and dream -- you have to act with a sense of responsibility."

And while Brown continues to seek truth in the spirit and the body through dance, he says, "You are evident of the work that they have put into you."

Ronald K. Brown/Evidence With Philadanco Filene Center at Wolf Trap 877-965-3872 Tuesday at 8