Marathon dance
The S.F. Ethnic Dance Fest opens strong.

By Rita Felciano

CLOCKING IN AT three hours, with eight different acts and more than 130 performers, the June 15 opening program of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival was a tour de force – albeit one that could tax the stamina of even dedicated traditional dance and music enthusiasts. For those who persevered, though, it offered glimpses of performances that can't be viewed unless you have more frequent flier miles than most of us amass in a lifetime.

The festival, now in its 24th year, has hooked up – unfortunately, for the first weekend only – with the San Francisco World Music Festival. This made all the difference in the world: the dances, some of which predate the mechanical reproduction of sound, need the special vibrancy of interaction that only live music can initiate.

Nowhere was this more clear than with Wushu West, a Berkeley martial arts school that appeared at the festival for the first time. In Wu Ling (Dynamic Sport) the performers' discipline and fierce focus brought down the house. As staged by former Shanghai Opera and Dance Theater choreographer David Chan, Wushu West's spectacular physical feats acquired resonance and, especially in the performance of artistic director Patti Li, an emotional substance that elevated the routines from athletics and spiritual practice to the realm of art. In Li's two extraordinary solos, the music – a chamber music score for Chinese instruments and cello from composer Xi Pei-kun motivated every accent move, from tiny shivers in the torso and nanosecond poses to slides that extended into legato. This is one athlete who is also a dancer.

The collaboration with the World Music Festival also facilitated the first-time appearance of two small groups from Siberia, Sabjilar and Elvel. Sabjilar, a trio, opened the evening with a set that included hauntingly raucous throat singing (once paired with a breathless flute) and a vibratoless soprano. Some of the simple rhythms, the music's strophic nature, and the round-robin singing surprisingly sounded like they could have come from Texas.

Elvel showcased good humor and enthusiasm. Hailing from Kamchatka, the Siberian peninsula north of Okinawa, the quartet's singer-dancers were accompanied by flat drums and dressed in spectacular leather and furs. The men competed in transforming themselves into howling wolves, morphing their faces into grotesque animal masks. Shaking their shoulders and hopping on two feet, the women got their message across as well: they wanted their men, and they got them.

Prayer #7, a breathtaking trance dance by Banafsheh Sayyad and the two dancers of her Namah Ensemble, would be right at home in a modern dance concert. Accompanied by percussion, they spiraled in tandem and around one another, expanding and contracting space. Though never touching, the dancers stayed in touch – with one another and some force that propelled them. Sayyad's solo, Axis of Love, in which she wore white with two blue veils attached to her fingers, spoke somewhat less hypnotically. But it impressed because of her pure and transparent response to the music as performed by a fabulous trio from Los Angeles, Pejman Hadadi, Javid Afsari Rad, and Brad Dutz. Their solo, with Rad's colorful improvisation on the santoor (dulcimer), proved to be one of the evening's many musical highlights.

To include flamenco dancer La Tania in this program, in which Middle Eastern and Asian influences were so prevalent, was inspired. Not only did it place flamenco into context – prominent use of flowing arms was noticeable throughout the evening – but it also showed the dance's multifaceted and structurally complex nature. Solea looked like grand opera, with La Tania moving from one point of high drama to another, whether on planted feet or with splattering-raindrop beats. With her back to the audience, or arching her neck to the sky, she kept the passion one step away from explosion. Yet her sinuously churning arms spoke of escape, and her articulate fingers looked like birds about to take off.

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival runs through June 30. Sat/22, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun/23, 2 p.m. Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, S.F. $20-$30. (415) 392-4400, www.tickets.com.