REVIEW
Much to celebrate in black dance festival
Rachel Howard, Special to The Chronicle

Monday, February 12, 2007


The Black Choreographers Festival kicked off its two-weekend, two-city run in Oakland on Friday with a big opening-night audience ranging from age 7 to 70 crowding the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts. This was a community celebration, and there was much to celebrate. The work was uneven, but flashes of virtuosity were never far away.

Los Angeles tappers Jason Samuels Smith and Chloe Arnold traded riffs with a tight jazz duo and each other. Smith is a rag-limbed prodigy able to trace astonishing swoops of sound with his slides and jolt you alert with a stomping backbeat; Arnold is a fleet-footed lady who knows how to hang with the boys. There was a lesson in one-upmanship: Improvisation is choreography, too. Their unison finale brought down the house.