DANCE REVIEWS : KAPO TROUPE

In a summer dance season that offers such highly promoted attractions as Rudolf Nureyev, the Bolshoi Ballet and the L.A. Festival, the unheralded Nigerian dance troupe KAPO proved an unexpected delight on Saturday.

Twelve KAPO dancers and musicians brought to the intimate Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Theater studio the freshness, vitality and joyfulness that often withers in theatrical restagings of traditional music and dance.

Excerpts from the company’s full-length dance and musical theater production “Kalamambo” appeared largely unrelated to the theme of “a nuclear test gone awry,” but did use movement, mime and gesture to develop broadly dramatized stories about courtship and initiation ceremonies. Duduyemi (played with engaging innocence by Demola Ogunde) provided the narrative thread as he encountered the rites and responsibilities of manhood.

In “The Ajo-Sato Dance,” four women set the scene with movement that repeated and expanded bathing and laundering gestures. The men’s huge stalking steps set the boundaries of the ferocious “Sato” drum-cult ceremonies, and when the dance around the totem drum moved within spitting distance of the audience, one felt the ground-shaking force of their fury.

“Atilogwu” completed the program with a celebration of pure virtuosity. Percussionists set the rhythm for six dancers spurred on by the Oja “talking” flute. Unison running patterns framed vigorous and delicate dances for three couples as the inexhaustible, antic flutist Taju Mohibi provided accompaniment and inspiration.