Even after the 16-year-old Ballet Nouveau Colorado added a small performance ensemble six years ago, it remained on the fringes of the Denver dance scene, presenting low-budget productions mainly in small suburban venues.
But with its 21st Century Choreography Competition, which concludes this weekend at the Lakewood Cultural Center, the company has taken a big step forward, grabbing the attention of not just the local dance scene but national observers, as well.
Whatever this scrappy, 11-member company might lack in size or financial muscle it has made up in creativity with this innovative, technologically sophisticated contest geared to the Web 2.0 generation.
To participate, 29 entrants from across the country posted 5-minute videos on YouTube, and the three finalists were selected in part through online public voting. Though not well known, none of the finalists is exactly a novice in the field either.
Each of their 17- to 20-minute works, which were created and set on the company during 25 hours of rehearsals, is featured as part of a highly ambitious program that also includes a new work by Garrett Ammon, who took over as artistic director in June.
The winner of the competition, to be announced Monday, is being chosen through a weighted process involving local and national judges and attendees, who vote at each performance via cell phone or paper ballots.
My pick goes to Ma Cong’s “Inner Voices,” which is leading the cumulative judging so far. A Chinese native who has been a member of the Tulsa (Okla.) Ballet since 1999, he has created works for that company and a few others.
The fun, largely lighthearted offering for eight dancers, is set to songs in multiple languages by Lila Downs, Lhasa de Sela and Kayah and responsively shifts in mood and look as the music changes in each section.
Ma has created a commendably original, variegated movement vocabulary that is loosely rooted in modern dance, with hints of tango, flamenco and Eastern European folk dance.
Juxtapositions abound. Gentle vertical undulations and hula-like moves playfully offset jerked arms, cocked heads and crooked necks, with leg slaps and other motifs providing sometimes unexpected accents along the way.
Ma constantly refreshes the work, adding new choreographic elements as it progresses and imaginatively changing the mix and configuration of dancers, all while managing to achieve an overall sense of unity.
Also strong is “Hurricane” by Heather Maloy, artistic director and resident choreographer of Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance in Asheville, N.C. As the title suggests, the piece for six dancers attempts to evoke the power of a hurricane — a compelling concept.
If the work does not achieve the kind of choreographic integrity and inventiveness of “Inner Voices,” there are nonetheless striking moments. Among the most memorable is the gradual swaying and rising that opens the first section, “Gathering Storm.”
The weakest of the three competition entries is “The Act of Three Collisions,” by Alex Ketley of San Francisco. He retired from dancing in 1998 to devote himself to choreography and has won several awards in the field.
The notion of trying to fuse video and dance with a score that combines the haunting medieval music of Hildegard of Bingen with the sounds of a military battlefield seems promising enough, but the piece for five dancers never jells into a coherent whole.
Rounding out the program is the premiere of Ammon’s “and tomorrow came,” a clever work speaking to the inevitable transition from carefree youth to adulthood.
Ballet Nouveau Colorado is still a long way from being a true competitor to Colorado Ballet, but it is certainly showing its much larger neighbor and the dance world at large a thing or two about packaging dance for the 21st century.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
21st Century Choreography Competition
Dance Lakewood Cultural Center, 470 S. Allison Parkway. A Ballet Nouveau Colorado program including the three finalists of a national competition featured on YouTube. 8 p.m. today and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Two hours. $26, $22 students and seniors. 303-466-5685 or
