A mix of local and national dance

In the monthlong series Philadelphia Dance Projects Presents '09 curated by Terry Fox, local dance was mixed with the programs of companies from Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. High points were Headlong Dance Theater's perspicuous body language and Zane Booker's and Mathew Janczewski's multivalenced choreography. Keely Garfield's "Limerence" - though unpleasant to watch - raised interesting psycho-socio-sexual questions.

Fox capstoned the series with the SCUBA National Touring Network for Dance's triple-threat combo from San Francisco, Seattle, and Philadelphia at Temple University over the weekend.

Founder of San Francisco's inkBoat, Japanese American Shinichi Iova-Koga harmonizes his training in butoh and judo with his studies in Western improvisational and physical theater, heavily accenting his Japanese side. In "Milk Traces," a riveting one-man dance theater piece, he evolves from a simian creature trying to escape the bonds of a raggedy rope to a smoking, toothless, old drunk. However restrictive the rope, it also supports him in otherwise impossible movements, like rising to his feet from a full backbend with no other impetus.

Charles O. Anderson teaches at Muhlenberg College and lives in Philadelphia, where he bases his company dance theater X. When he is in motion, I have to force myself to watch the rest of his excellent seven-member company. In "Tar," excerpted from a larger work drawn from The Wonderful Tar Baby Story, Anderson dances around the margins of the stage, wandering off like an outlier only to come back again with emphatic movement. Anderson's voice-over ends, "We are in tar, baby."

Willis C. Brown Jr. and Karama Butler danced in "Tar," and in "evidence of things (un)said" they crouch out with Anderson in vee formation, arms dangling beneath them. Anderson rotates his muscular arms backward as he powers across the stage. He kneels, bends back to the floor, crooks his fingers, grasping for something that isn't there. Dancing in a world of his own, he is yet one of the most authoritative dancers on Philadelphia's stages.

From Seattle, Corrie Befort and Beth Graczyk of Salt Horse danced to Angela Baldoz's electronic sound score in "This was a Cliff." As though socially maladjusted, the two followed each other in illogical movement that implied a dream narrative - unbalanced, yet never faltering in its secretive arc, amusing in a spazzy way, and finally, shocking as one dancer covered head to foot in matted hair, throws herself prostrate in the middle of the audience. If she sought mercy, she got that in the form of explosive applause.

No further performances.