Wednesday October 10, 2001

Like a scene from "Flashdance" - with cactuses added - Tucsonans will be a-jivin' during the 10th annual Arizona Jazz Dance Showcase.

The festival opens with a "Jazz in AZ" performance tomorrow evening.

The popular showcase celebrates an original American dance form: jazz dance, which splices classical and modern dance with cool jazz.

Performed by the University of Arizona Dance Ensemble and choreographed by UA dance faculty members, "Jazz in AZ" is a public concert preceding the festival.

Dance professor and event co-director Michael Williams began the festival in 1991 when he was hired as the first UA jazz dance faculty member. Since the original performance, attendance has surged from approximately 85 people to this year's anticipated 700 or 800 audience members.

Although many private studios and companies stage jazz festivals, UA has one of the only collegiate programs to assemble a jazz show of this scale.

"It's very ironic. Jazz is an American art form. It belongs to us," co-director and assistant dance professor Susan Quinn said. "Yet we (Americans) were the last ones on the block to be putting it into academia."

The showcase's goals include raising jazz dance awareness, fund-raising and increasing recruitment of potential students.

Compared to classical or even modern dance, jazz dance is relatively new - not yet even 100 years old.

"Jazz dance is like a melting pot," Quinn said. "We're thieves - we steal from all different types of technique."

This festival differentiates itself from other similar showcases by creating an untraditional traditional dance competition. Instead, Williams focuses on actively inviting student and guest dancers, as opposed to forcing them to jockey for a place on the stage.

Faculty choreographers Amy Ernst, Sam Watson, working in conjunction with Quinn and Williams, promise an impressive performance. With dance pieces sampling a wide range of styles from tango to baroque to French impressionism, there should be something to please even the most persnickety audience.

Williams describes his portion of the performance's choreography as a "French female fantasy kind of thing."

If Parisian-inspired amore is not enough to arouse interest, a four-man vocal a cappella group compliments portions of the dance performance by singing renditions of two jazz-pop favorites.

Also, two internationally renowned guest dancers will perform in this year's showcase: Mia Michaels, hot off the Madonna World Tour, and Richard Havey, a visiting artistic director of a professional dance conservatory from Zurich, Switzerland.

Havey plans to import dancers from his conservatory, as well as participate in the performance. The two pieces he choreographed offer a taste of European-style modern jazz.

While Havey is a repeat festival guest with several years' experience, Michaels is a recent acquisition to the showcase's repertoire. No UA stage has ever presented the body-shaking moves of a Prince, Ricky Martin and Madonna choreographer before.

"There's nothing like her choreography," Quinn said. "You can tell her style right away. It's like Bob Fossey and Jerome Robbins."

Additionally, Michaels is using the festival to premiere a new work with an original score, which blends a ballet vocabulary with customary jazz.

Williams aims to please an audience not yet ready for a retirement community.

"We try to include a variety of jazz dance choreography that has an appeal for a young audience, such as college kids that will be hip to it," Williams said. "It's hip and cool stuff."

"I call it education entertainment," Quinn said.