'CityDance Celebrates,' With Talent to the Corps

CityDance Ensemble's Alice Wylie and Eileen Beth Mitchell, below, took part in the salute to women at Strathmore. (Photos By Lois Greenfield)

He's done it. CityDance Ensemble Artistic Director Paul Gordon Emerson has taken his company in 10 years from so-so to wow.

Friday at the Music Center at Strathmore, it was delightfully clear that he had fashioned a fully professional company in every sense. Finally, we have a home-grown modern dance company that can compete with the best.

"CityDance Celebrates: Women in the Arts" honored the artistry of women in contemporary dance. Yet the company gave a performance so astonishingly good that it celebrated modern dance itself.

What is it that has made this company's star shine so brilliantly after years of simply showing its potential? The lure of salaries certainly has helped attract the likes of former New York City Ballet dancer Jerome Johnson, as well as tempt superbly trained locals and excellent dancers temporarily in Washington. With firm financial footing, a terrific home (Strathmore) and gathering dance-world buzz, CityDance has been able to choose, and it has chosen well: Alicia Canterna (Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington), Kyra Jean Green (Juilliard School), Bruno Augusto (National School of the Arts in Cuba), Florian Rouiller (Joffrey Ballet school), and university dance department-trained dancers Ellen Rippon, Eileen Beth Mitchell and Alice Wylie. All dance with the heft and meatiness that separate modern dancers from their strictly ballet counterparts.

The program included two world premieres ("White" by White Oak Dance Project veteran Susan Shields and "Souvenirs" by Meisha Bosma), two company premieres ("Contained Infinity" and "Dust Bowl Ballads") and repertory pieces ("Bubbles" by Green, "Endless Cycle" by Tara Pierson Dunning and "Han" by Emerson). There wasn't a bad one in the bunch.

"Souvenirs" used a mysterious score by Somei Satoh with a plaintive melody that soared above a babble of sound. The good-humored quartet "White" bounced along in eight-count phrases. Harumi Terayama's "Contained Infinity," to a score by Andrzej Przybytkowski, featured a marvelously strange adagio that sounded like foghorns in the distance. It was paired with slow-motion lifts and a turbulent, body-pounding allegro accompanied by the sound of distant laughter.

Toward the evening's end strode Sophie Maslow's 1941 "Dust Bowl Ballads," two simple-yet-savvy solos (beautifully danced by Mitchell and Green) that reminded us that newer is not always better.

Many local modern dance companies have emerged and either persisted on simmer or flamed out in the last several years. Rare is the exception, and that exception is CityDance.