There's an elderly woman I sometimes see perambulating the streets of Greenwich Village, sometimes by herself, sometimes accompanied by a young man, often with a confused look in her eyes. I don't know her, but I do know who she is. Because I am aware of her stature, I always try to greet her by name, in the notion that it means something to her to be recognized. I've seen all too little of her work; I've just taken the word of others that it's got grit. Thursday night at the Miller Theater, thanks to a group of women on the opposite side of their careers--dance students at Barnard College--I saw why Anna Sokolow is a legend.

To a pedestrian like me, Sokolow's "Ride the Culture Loop," staged by Lorry May, seems like a tough dance to take on, for dancers of any age, let alone those at the beginning of their careers. The title refers to a bus route which began in Greenwich Village, passing through the Upper East Side and Spanish Harlem.

The music reflects this diverse landscape, streaming from electric guitar to symphonic jazz to Latin jazz to mambo. The movement goes from the vivacious -- such as a semi-spastic beginning, to the guitar, and a conga line towards the end -- to the pensive, such as a diet, danced calmly by guest artist Benjamin Cortez and Heather White. It has a feeling of travel, at a wide range of tempi, with varying degrees of urgency.

Sometimes they bundle together as a group, at one point waving, as if from a bus; at others the patterns are more spread out and spare. I was impressed not only that the dancers could pull this off, but that they did it so seamlessly. Those dancers: Cortez, White, Miranda Calderon, Elyssa Dole, Kate Garroway, Julie Grinfeld, Katie Higham-Kessler,Tohko Kosuge, Jessica Lewis, Leah Nelson, Cathy Paras, and Diana Torba.

What impressed me about Sokolow's style is that it had no one style, no recognizable set of phrases. I understand some might find this a liability. For me, the attraction is that the phrases were built specifically on and for the music . . . .

Barnard College students in Ride The Culture Loop
Photo: Ron Williams