Dance

Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina A Biohistory of American Performance By Brenda Dixon Gottschild Palgrave Macmillan. 370 pp. $27 This is a Philadelphia story that rivals Rocky in blood, sweat, and tears, not to mention fabulous footwork. Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope for the Black Ballerina is, of course, about the visionary founder and artistic director of Philadanco, the internationally renowned dance troupe that is still going strong after 40 years and that embodies the spirit of Philadelphia.

High school freshman Kelly Griffith, sporting an earring from which a safety pin, a peace sign and a crucifix dangled, was jamming on the dance floor, clad in a screaming yellow-and-black sweater and skirt. Her partner, in a jacket and tie, seemed more sedate. And he looked, well, old enough to be her father. But that's not surprising - because Frank Griffith was one of 200 fathers who escorted their daughters to Archbishop Carroll High School's annual father-daughter dance Friday night.

Brigitta Herrmann is a living legacy of German expressionist dance, or Ausdruckstanz, which may not directly translate into awestruck dance, but sure sounds like it. From its founder, Mary Wigman, in pre-World War II Berlin to Herrmann, who has worked in the discipline since emigrating to Philadelphia, its practitioners often look profoundly enlightened by some barely discernible truth. When she left Berlin in 1968, Herrmann had been the last of Wigman's students. She presented a world premiere at Community Education Center Friday evening, a dance theater work in three parts titled Physiognomy of the Spirit.

Afro-One, a 45-member dance and drama theater group, kicked off its 15th season Saturday evening to an exuberant crowd at Willingboro High School. Dedicated to the preservation of Afro-American culture, the troupe performed jazz routines and classical ballet. To the pounding beat of three conga drums, authentic West African dances came alive. In a two-hour show, the troupe re-enacted 300 years of black history through dance, poetry interpretations and music and performed the debut of Say Amen, a spiritual tribute to Afro-American gospel music.

It might have been rock-and-roll playing on the boombox, but it was music to the ears of the senior residents of Manchester Nursing Home in Media. Clapping to the sounds of "Do You Love Me," the residents smiled as students from the Sleighton School Dance Company performed during a holiday party Dec. 19. When the music ended, the students seemed slightly nervous before the crowd of about 50 residents, but the residents had no problem expressing their sentiments with warm applause.

In its 57th season, Singing City is among the stalwart choral groups in Philadelphia. Like other arts organizations around the city, it seeks to attract new audiences by including works by contemporary composers and through collaborations with artists in other disciplines. With music director Jeffrey Brillhart conducting Voices of the Heart, the Saturday evening performance, Singing City drew a full house at Philadelphia Cathedral. Their collaboration was with dancer/choreographer Amanda Miller and videographer Tobin Rothlein, who recently broke away from Phrenic New Ballet to form miro dance theatre.

A dancer and choreographer of great imagination, Steve Krieckhaus leads us into unthinkable, bizarre landscapes and deeds. It's a sign of his intelligence as an artist that he makes them more than plausible. He makes them reflections of our own fantasies. No matter what Krieckhaus is up to, we can identify with it. Krieckhaus is up to plenty in the six solos he performed at Temple University's Conwell Dance Theater last night, and will repeat tonight at 8. His solos spring from mundane situations and images, as in Smell and Book, to a portrait of the psychopath, In the Dark.

"Strictly Ballroom" gets one thing straight right away - if you think ballroom dancing is for sissies, you're mistaken. The movie opens during the finals of a regional ballroom dance competition in Australia. Two couples, the odds-on favorites, are waging a war of style that quickly escalates into a nasty physical confrontation. What follows looks less like dancing than the chariot race in "Ben Hur. " One couple cuts off a rival pairing, squeezing them into a cramped corner where there is no room to dance.

Bah, humbug! The sentiments of Ebenezer Scrooge notwithstanding, Danceteller's adaptation of Charles Dickens' Christmas classic, A Christmas Carol, is a generally joyful affair that gets to the heart of the story with speed and verve. This production, which was presented last night at the Painted Bride Art Center and continues through tomorrow night, is a mixed-media piece combining Dickens' words with dance and pantomime. The script is by David B. Collins, and the choreography by Trina Collins, artistic director of Danceteller.

Nobody knows what will happen tonight, tomorrow and Sunday nights at the Painted Bride, and that's OK. Surprise is the very point of a program that will test and display dancers' skills in improvisational situations. Improvisation was an important performance trend in the 1960s; because dancers didn't need finely schooled techniques to improvise, it partook of the populist impulse of the times. Improvisation also acquired an aura of glamour when it was practiced by the now legendary Grand Union, a loose confederation of daring wits who could also move well.