Movers and shakers worth remembering

It’s a crapshoot which dance events local audiences can see in any particular year: Presenters usually don’t curate bookings around a theme, much less coordinate their schedules with others. Thus, some months offer an impossibly dense pileup of conflicting attractions, while you could cluster-bomb the Southland in other months and never hit a dancer.

By coincidence, 2003 provided a survey of the creative range and imaginative power of African American dance -- tap, hip-hop, modern, ballet -- everything so sure of itself, so inspiring that it would make any year memorable if nothing else took place. But as always, the year’s dance card held a spectrum of happy surprises and discoveries, 10 of which are listed below in chronological order:

Tap phenomenon Savion Glover reaffirmed his preeminence in a revival of his brilliant Broadway cavalcade of black endurance under oppression, “Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk,” at the Ahmanson Theatre of the Music Center in January and February. (Watch for it on PBS and home video next year.)

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company celebrated its 50th anniversary in fascinating mixed programs at UCLA’s Royce Hall, also in January and February. This aficionado especially enjoyed the modern dance master’s unexpectedly sensual “Way Station,” perfectly set off by the wry sports-related “How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run” and the buoyant ensemble showpiece “Interscape.”

In “Facing Mekka,” Rennie Harris created a groundbreaking, deeply spiritual and meditative exploration of hip-hop music and dance, lovingly performed by his Philadelphia-based Puremovement company at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA in April. It was a milestone in the translation of street dance to the concert stage.

Loretta Livingston’s “Leaving (Evidence)” focused on the impermanence of dance and the isolation of the artist. The result (at the L.A. Theatre Center in May): an insightful, imaginative look at how it feels to belong, body and soul, to an inescapably ephemeral art.

American Ballet Theatre’s staging of Frederick Ashton’s “The Dream” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in July showed that this artistically and financially challenged company can periodically justify its pretensions by dancing at the highest international level. Julie Kent and Ethan Stiefel (in different casts) proved particularly magical in this Shakespearean dance comedy. (Watch for it too on PBS and home video next year.)

Alonzo King’s “Road” and “Ocean,” at the Luckman Complex at Cal State L.A. in August, showcased this choreographer’s Bay Area-based LINES Contemporary Ballet and his abstract, post-Balanchine classicism. High-risk partnering experiments and spectacular angularities may have been the most obvious novelties on the program, but King’s commitment to creative growth embraced everything and everyone.

Four pieces by the Beijing Modern Dance Company at the Watercourt at California Plaza in downtown L.A. in August confirmed that the rebellious spirit and forceful movement skills of contemporary dance can thrive in places where they’re not merely entertaining but essential statements of a people’s resilience. “All River Red,” a daringly politicized setting of “The Rite of Spring,” provided the ultimate example of dance as social conscience.

In engagements at the Kodak Theatre and the Orange County Performing Arts Center in October, a new Kirov Ballet regime reminded everyone what great corps dancing looked like and, among its other achievements, presented Diana Vishneva in two of the year’s great performances: Nikiya in Petipa’s “La Bayadere” and the “Rubies” ballerina in Balanchine’s “Jewels.”

The Ririe-Woodbury company of Salt Lake City staged a magical retrospective of multimedia innovations by the late Alwin Nikolais at the Luckman Complex at Cal State L.A. in October. Costumes, lighting, set design, electronic music and choreography: Nikolais did it all, and the program unfailingly conveyed the sense of childlike wonder at the heart of his style.

The National Ballet of Cuba brought an unusual, exciting version of the Petipa/Gorsky “Don Quixote” to the Cerritos Center in November. Defections and money problems plague Alicia Alonso’s company just as much as they bedevil its island home. But the dancers’ limitless technical prowess, stylistic savvy and indomitable spirit teach us what’s often missing when richer, more stable troupes attempt 19th century classics.

Disappointments? Plenty, but none more alarming than the newly reconstituted Martha Graham Dance Company’s inability to bring alive her fabled repertory. Currently led by artists who served as rehearsal directors in the previous regime, the company danced cleanly enough at New York’s Joyce Theater in January, but many of the pieces looked opaque and downright unreadable: no dramatic through-line or focus, just fragments of a towering, expressive sensibility that many of us foolishly thought was imperishable.

Segal is The Times’ dance critic.