Modern Dance

Most modern-dance companies are either/or: Either they're a vehicle for a single choreographer or they go the eclectic route. The Toronto Dance Theater (TDT), which will make its Philadelphia debut at the Annenberg Center tonight through Saturday, is what artistic director David Earle calls "a little odd. " Following a middle path, it has four resident choreographers - Earle and Christopher House are currently more active than the others - but shies from inviting outsiders to add to the repertory.

The success of Tango Argentino must be one of the biggest surprises Broadway has ever had. The show first slipped into New York at the wrong time (late June) and the wrong theater (the City Center is associated with high-art dance attractions, mostly modern dance) - but its one-week run was a sellout. When it came back in October, this time at a Broadway house, it already had cachet. The show opened for a three-week run and ended up staying for six months. It absolutely, positively closes Sunday and then begins a long national tour.

The Modern Dance Collaborative, which had its premier concert last night at the Painted Bride Art Center, was founded by choreographer Angela Moreino. The program featured seven dances by three choreographers: Jaye Allison, Moreino, and Henry Roy. Though the program was uneven, it felt good to welcome an ensemble that can combine balletic jazz dance, abstract modern, and narratives of African American history into a single program. The highlight of the evening was Allison's Con Piacere, three-part suite that was a fine balance of musical and dramatic expression.

After 12 years of creating dance, commissioning work from world-class choreographers, and opening a theater and studio in a converted mechanic's shop, former Martha Graham principal dancer Jeanne Ruddy announced Monday that she was folding her Philadelphia modern dance company. "I came to the decision that it was time for me to move on, and that I had done what it was that I had set out to do," Ruddy, 58, said in her office at the Performance Garage on Brandywine Street. She paused frequently to get her emotions in check, and drew her long, dark-blond hair up in a clip several times, before pulling it down again moments later.

Germaine Mancke became an addict at the age of 11, with the encouragement of her parents. Twenty-seven years later, raising a 17-year-old son by herself, her craving is undiminished. Despite family responsibilities, the Chalfont resident made a commitment 2 1/2 years ago to do everything and anything to support her vice. She would wait tables, do office work, teach - to support her desire to be a big-time choreographer and dancer. "I would really like to drop the waitressing and office work," Mancke said, "and truly want to make this my career.

What the Silesian Dance Theatre is not: a group of quaintly dressed dancers presenting Polish folk dances of their region. What the Silesian Dance Theatre is: Well, that's a little harder to say. The 10-year-old troupe, founded by questing spirit Jacek Luminski, was the first modern-dance company in Poland. Its distinctive and compelling style, adapting Polish and Jewish dance traditions along with newer influences, has drawn positive critical comments on tour in Europe and the United States.

In the 1990s, three of the city's premier modern-dance choreographers, unable to adjust to radical changes in funding, shut down their dance companies and left town. This would surely be the death of dance, some predicted gloomily. Instead, Philadelphia's dance scene has thrived. What were once limitations have become strengths. Out of turmoil came unity and the birth of a dance environment that's virtually unique in the country. Philadelphia has become home to an increasingly diverse lineup of performers whose work is being recognized far beyond the city limits.

The third graders at East Ward Elementary School spent the better part of Tuesday morning learning about shapes. But instead of drawing circles, figure eights and sharp angles on paper, the students used their feet and arms to create the shapes. Clearly enjoying themselves, the youngsters contorted their bodies into forms and figures under the watchful eyes of two members of the Bella Lewitzky Company, a Los Angeles-based modern dance group. The company is conducting dance workshops this week for students in several schools in the Downingtown Area School District.

It is midnight, his dancers are quietly finishing a meal after their performance, and Mikhail Baryshnikov leans back from the table to light a cigar. A Havana, a Monte Cristo, long, dark - a gift from friends who buy them for him when they are in Europe. This expansive flourish fits his role as lord of the manor, patron of the arts, producer of his own performances. "It's nice to be self-employed," he murmurs as he watches the waiters distributing dinners - his largesse - to his dancing colleagues.

You might think a producer was crazy to book the White Oak Dance Project into the Academy of Music with the kind of high-seriousness program that the group will be performing there on Wednesday and Thursday. Of the seven pieces currently in White Oak's repertory, only two are by names sufficiently well-known to sell tickets to a mass public - Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp. A couple of the other choreographers are completely unknown. Of the nine dancers in the four-year-old troupe, eight might ring a bell, but only to those who have assiduously made the rounds of modern-dance troupes within the last decade.

Spring 2013 promises to be a great one for dance and dance lovers. On the local scene, Pennsylvania Ballet reopened its school in the fall and moved into new Center City studios this month. The company, which marks its 50th birthday next season, dances four packed programs this spring, with choreography by Christopher Wheeldon, Forsythe & Kylian, and, of course, Balanchine. Among the visiting companies, I am particularly eager to see Dance Theatre of Harlem, which began performing again this season after an eight-year hiatus.

Many in Philadelphia's dance community were stunned in November when former Martha Graham principal dancer Jeanne Ruddy announced plans to disband her modern dance company. But Janet Pilla, a dancer with the company since 2001 and one of its two associate artistic directors, was less taken aback. She'd been through this before — three times, in fact. "The truth is I'm never surprised about things like that," she said, "because I've danced with a lot of dance companies.

Philadanco, by its very name — the Philadelphia Dance Company — embraces its hometown. And if ever there was a dance company to love back, it's this one. The dancers are sublime, the works accessible, and some of the best American choreographers regularly make new pieces for Danco to premiere for Philadelphia audiences. When the company tours the world — it was most recently in Macedonia — it's as an art ambassador from the City of Brotherly Love. The troupe opened Friday night at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater with a program called "The Philadelphia Connection.

Because of passport problems and a missed flight, the members of DanceBrazil didn't get to Philadelphia until 4 a.m. Thursday. But you would never have guessed it from the explosive, high-energy performance they gave that same night at the Annenberg Center. The much-traveled troupe celebrated its 35th anniversary by presenting a pair of short pieces choreographed by their founder and artistic director, Jelon Vieira. Like him, the dozen dancers come from Brazil - mainly Bahia, the center of Afro-Brazilian culture.

This was not just another Asian-fusion dance concert. In recent years there has been a vogue for combining Indian classical dance with Western techniques - Bharatanatyam and ballet, Kuchipudi and modern dance, Kathak and tap - with varying degrees of success. In her one-woman show, Friday and Saturday at the Painted Bride, Sheetal Gandhi used Indian heel-stamps and turns, alongside Western-style isolations and floor work, to create an eloquent, inventive, virtuosic dance-theater piece that kept the opening-night audience transfixed.

In her 80 years, Joan Myers Brown has been an artist, entrepreneur, and visionary, who with steely grace founded first, in 1960, a dance school for African American children and then, in 1970, Philadanco, where young dancers of color could find a performance home. It is now one of America's most important companies, and one of Philadelphia's most renowned touring exports. The challenge of relating Brown's life and accomplishments, of capturing her vitality, glamour and humanity, required someone her equal in beauty and wisdom.

WHEN SHE was 7, Lindsay Browning was nervous and excited waiting for her father to come to her school. When he arrived, he was dressed as Abraham Lincoln to teach her class about the former president's life. Today, the Philly-based dancer has transformed that childhood experience into a contemporary dance titled "Lincoln Luck. " Browning was inspired by imagining herself as Lincoln's "daughter of the future," basing her image both on Lincoln's personal history and on her father's portrayal of him. The performance explores themes such as luck and fate, and how they relate to Lincoln's life.

After 12 years of creating dance, commissioning work from world-class choreographers, and opening a theater and studio in a converted mechanic's shop, former Martha Graham principal dancer Jeanne Ruddy announced Monday that she was folding her Philadelphia modern dance company. "I came to the decision that it was time for me to move on, and that I had done what it was that I had set out to do," Ruddy, 58, said in her office at the Performance Garage on Brandywine Street. She paused frequently to get her emotions in check, and drew her long, dark-blond hair up in a clip several times, before pulling it down again moments later.

Olive Dance Theatre's 'Brotherly Love' Olive, formed in 2002 by Jamie Merwin, has just returned from a national tour with this show about the early MOVE confrontations in Philadelphia. Through hip-hop-inflected "breakin,'" the company's dancers explore personal struggles with the questions and issues the radical movement evoked. Sept. 30-Oct. 1 at the Painted Bride, 230 Vine St. (215-925-9914 www.paintedbride.org ). The Blind Faith Project The First Wave is a sensitive, witty treatment of the early-20th-century suffragist movement.

To most Americans, Cuba is still a tantalizing mystery: a forbidden island nation, just 90 miles from Key West, where communism coexists with palm trees, really good cigars, and the sultry strains of salsa music. Among dance lovers, it has long been celebrated as the birthplace of great ballerinas - from 90-year-old legend Alicia Alonso to Pennsylvania Ballet's own Riolama Lorenzo - and mambo, a social dance form that has found its way to Hollywood, Broadway, and beyond. But we've never seen Cuban modern dance - until now. This week Danza Contemporánea de Cuba (DCC)