Stellar CityDance Needs Choreography to Match

The top-notch dancers of CityDance Ensemble were reason enough to applaud the troupe's concert Saturday at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. The program, titled "Next," was intended to spotlight newish, forward-looking works by lesser-known choreographers. But while most of these fell short, the dancing triumphantly proclaimed that this is a company with excellence in its future.

What CityDance now needs to focus on, in its 12th year as a D.C.-based contemporary repertory company, is putting together a smart program of first-rate choreography. As in past forays, this outing emphasized quantity over quality. Of the six works, five were minimally interesting -- and one was an utter luxury: Sophie Maslow's 1942 classic "Folksay." It came first in the lineup, superbly augmented by the guitar accompaniment and folksy patter of musicians Andrew and John Ratliff, taking on roles originally created by Woody Guthrie and Earl Robinson.

As the name implies, "Folksay" was crafted as a suite of stylized folk dances, a tribute to the great, ordinary, rock-hard folks that Guthrie and other artists of the time lionized in ballads and literature. You think "On Top of Old Smokey" is a sweet nursery school tune? Delphina Parenti, CityDance's most interesting dancer, turned it into a quiet heartbreak in waltz time. All nine dancers plunged into "Folksay" as if it were newly minted on their bodies; the style was vintage early modern dance -- big and flung-open within simple patterns -- but there was nothing outdated about it. The whole enthralling piece was as warm and bright as a summer picnic under clear skies.

Then the clouds settled in: Each of the works that followed, all created within the past six years, was set in shadows and half-light. It was as if the dance world had plunged into an energy crisis, or had no funds for light bulbs. But darkness wasn't their only drawback.

It's a marvel anyone would think it best to combine the live recitation of King Menelaus's gaseous speech after the Trojan War, ponderous clanging by Estonian composer Arvo Part and dancers outfitted to look like they'd fallen off a Grecian urn, but such was the case in Austin McCormick's "War." This is an excerpt from a longer piece, and it's a mercy the fuller experience was cut short. Yet there was more fall-down-and-get-up trouble in store with Kate Weare's "Drop Down," a punishing duet between dysfunctional lovers (Giselle Alvarez and Maleek Makhail Washington); Artistic Director Paul Gordon Emerson's "Han," inspired by a Korean term for "a state of sadness so deep that there are no tears"; and Christopher K. Morgan's "Ties That Bind," an intermittently clever piece that had dancers untwist themselves from various forms of bondage.

Among these murky works, the solo "Nocturne Monologue," choreographed by Washington Ballet dancer Jason Hartley, was worthy of a second look, particularly as a showcase for Jason Garcia Ignacio's rubbery strength.

There is something troubling about the lesser of these pieces that goes beyond their gloomy atmosphere. CityDance's overall direction seems heavy-handed. Emerson, the director, is a former Hill staffer and policy wonk -- a man deeply steeped in the art of persuasion, with pronounced gifts for it -- and one gets the sense he guides his artistic venture with a measure of political zeal.

He spoke at length to the audience after "Folksay" about the importance of the upcoming presidential election as well as arts funding, its benefits to the local economy and art "as an essential service in life." I don't quarrel with that, but the lecture, aimed at a theater full of enthusiastic supporters, struck me as misplaced and more about his political than his artistic beliefs.

It led me to wonder about what informs Emerson's programming choices: Were the works about war, sexual control and oppression evaluated on artistic merits or social and political ones? That's tricky ground for art. And tricky ground for CityDance, which can best promote the virtues of art by devoting itself to superior examples of it. With dancers as hungry and capable as Ignacio, Parenti and the rest, it's halfway there.