The most stunning thing about the stunning Les écailles de la mémoire (The scales of memory), the dance theater piece performed by the Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi on Saturday night, was its transcendence. Memory starts from an almost unbearably painful inspiration, the experience of slavery, but it finishes, miraculously, with celebration. Literally embodied in these two companies from the United States and Senegal, Memory is a tribute to people's ability to keep their humanity and sense of self even after the most obliterating cruelty and humiliation. ''I accept'' say the 14 extraordinary dancers at the end. But it's more like redemption.
Individuality is at the heart of Memory, which was presented by Miami Dade College. The two artistic directors, UBW's Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Jant-Bi's Germaine Acogny, choreographed by improvising with their dancers, who respond with terrifically gutsy performances, loaded not just with virtuosity and physical power but heart and personality. These dancers can say more with a look and a twist than most actors can in a monologue -- shaking their booty and the earth while they're at it. The more than 900 people at Liberty City's Joseph Caleb Auditorium responded by whooping, laughing and standing for a screaming ovation.
Everything in Memory functions on many levels, and the shifting flow of images and references creates an often dreamlike, emotionally riveting atmosphere. The soundtrack mixes Fabrice Bouillon-LaForest and Fréderic Bobin's flowing, guitar-driven, Afro-pop sounding music with Senegalese drumming, poetry, rapping in Wolof, ocean and bird sounds, percussive stomps and vocalizing from the dancers. Naoko Nagata's inventive, sexy urban tribal costumes combine modern street wear, African robes and slave rags.
Memory opens with the dancers reciting their family lineage, in English, French and Wolof, to the sound of ocean waves. Images of slavery run throughout: dancers huddle, peering upward in a shaft of light, as if from a ship's hold. Electrifying, shaved-headed Nora Chipaumire stands on a bench, hands delving into her own mouth and muscles, as if conducting her own auction block examination and grabbing for her body and self.
Other moments are less specific. The Jant-Bi men do a thundering dance where they pull red T-shirts first over their heads, then hang them from their mouths, as if spitting fire or blood. Maria Bauman whirls like a kicking helicopter in an incandescent solo. You half expect the UBW dancers to stomp through the floor and rebound flying, like superwomen powered by spectacular thighs and proud attitude. The Jant-Bi men have the fierce energy of traditional African dancers, but the choreography allows their individuality to emerge in a way it can't in traditional dance. When they all unite for a stomping circle, they funnel up a tornado.
They unite in a different way for a sexy and often hilarious couple dance, Africa and America, men and women. The women keep pushing away Pape Ibrahima Ndiaye, who can't or won't control his hyper-thrusting hips; Catherine Dénécy and Samantha Spelis do an I'm-sexier-than-you facedown as aggressive as any hip-hop dance battle.
They pull together for another explosion, first celebratory, then angry and defiant, and then come back down to quiet acceptance, and somehow, triumph. It's not just despite what they've been through that they're all that, but because of what they've been through.
