Dancers have much to say at Community Education Center

Good things can indeed come in small packages, as dancer-choreographer Shavon Norris proved when she unwrapped two small, power-packed works at the Community Education Center over the weekend.

To open, she danced her 2007 solo Said, a remembrance of things said to her as a child. In a pool of warm light, her movements began small - hips, then shoulders, then arms flying out - and gradually enlarged until she was moving full out across the floor.

Norris, a CEC resident artist this year, wore a simple peach frock and cornrowed hair that gave her a little-girl look. She hit that home with rhythmic body slapping of the sort children often do. She uttered words, almost inaudibly, but "wait, wait" could be heard several times - evoking the ominous "just you wait," and the wait that stretches longing into eternity for a child. The dance left a lot more unsaid, leaving audience members to recall words that had hurt, taught, or soothed them.

According to program notes by C. Kemal Nance, Norris invited him, Les Rivera, and Jumatatu Poe to join her in an exploration of the experiences of African American men. She videotaped them individually talking about what they remembered hearing as children, then asked them to dance the memories they had described. She pulled out dance phrases from what she saw and organized much of it by continually reorienting the three men in the space, with Matt Sharp's lighting redirecting the audience's focus. The result is We Said, Norris' sequel to Said.

They boxed, they kung-fu fought, they salsaed. They swayed like trees - Nance and Rivera sturdy oaks, Poe a young sapling. They made the angry contorted faces that terrify children, created rhythms with stomping feet, and windmilled their arms. They uttered statements: "Stop crying. Boys don't." One truly original movement had the men with their backs to the audience, heels together. As they rocked side to side, they lifted their soles. It looked so childlike.

Nance, who teaches Umfundalai, a pan-African dance technique created by Kariamu Welsh, is tall and beautifully sculpted and seemed the most avuncular of the three. Rivera, of Rennie Harris Puremovement, is shorter, more muscular, and the most athletic, and Poe - tall, thin, and angular - has a body best suited for modern dance. Yet each joined in the others' danced memoirs as if united in a secret brotherhood.