Photo By Matt Borgerding

Feelin' it: Cincinnati Ballet's Kristi Capps prepares for Lambarena

During a recent solo studio rehearsal, Cincinnati Ballet Principal Dancer Kristi Capps was swinging her long, slightly bent leg forward and back, passing through elegant attitude positions, offset by sweeping oppositional torso movements. Then, suddenly, she bent her knees and started snapping her chest forward and back in sharp, rhythmic contractions while her hands formed flat, sharp points, elbows spiking out to either side. What was she doing? Was she feeling OK?

She was feeling fine, just enjoying a run-through of celebrated choreographer Val Caniparoli's signature work, Lambarena. Created by Cincinnati Ballet's San Francisco-based resident choreographer, the exuberant piece that serves up a bold and heady cocktail of classical ballet and West African dance forms and music has finally made it to Cincinnati. Simply put, this piece breaks all the rules while simultaneously revitalizing classical ballet's canonized repertory. (It's been performed by 15 companies since its San Francisco Ballet debut in 1995.)

And, yes, he's gotten flack for it, but mostly only from ballet purists and critics.

"It's an easy target," Caniparoli says. "But to me it's obvious: It's just a celebration. It's not as serious as what a lot of people are taking it (to be)."

Some view mixing African dance with classical ballet as sacrilege. "There are many purists (who have said), 'Why are there so many white people onstage doing African dance? That's not right.' And I take so much issue with that, because you can reverse that: African Americans have every right to dance classical ballet, just as equally as Western European or white Americans have the right to dance all forms. I don't understand that narrow-mindedness."

But audiences can -- and do -- ignore the naysayers. According to Caniparoli, a majority of the audiences are having a great time, responding to the vibrant colors, the Bach layered with polyrhythms and the inherent joy in the expressive if unorthodox choreography.

The dancers get excited about it, too. It presents the challenge of learning a new way of moving.

"They are hungry for this and they love it," Caniparoli says. "There has been very little opposition, if any at all."

In a fitting parallel with the oral tradition of African cultures, he reports that word-of-mouth buzz among the dancer community has contributed to the piece's popularity: "Oh, I hear we're doing Lambarena. "

Capps expressed enthusiasm and warmth in her movements. "It feels great to dance it," she says, "It feels like you're really free."

Yet she acknowledges that it wasn't easy at first, describing how inhibited the dancers were during their first class with the specialists brought in to train them in West African dance fundamentals and technique. Eventually the dancers allowed themselves to feel the movement rather than examining it or judging themselves while trying it. That is, they benefited from ignoring the studio mirrors. They needed to shift focus from steps with ending positions to movements of continuous motion, thinking less "linear" and more "circular."

Founding members of the 30-year-old Oakland, Calif.-based West African dance company Diamano Coura collaborated with Caniparoli for the piece's inception and routinely provide educational residencies for companies that will perform Lambarena.

Caniparoli chuckles recalling their initial reaction to his out-of-the-blue phone call asking if they might help him create a work blending classical ballet with traditional African dance.

"They were like, 'What?' " he says. Then they heard the music, loved it and agreed to the fateful collaboration.

Although dance is about movement, it did all start with the music's inspiration. But Bach cut with West African percussion?

"It's a celebration of two cultures and their similarities," Caniparoli explains. "Too often, we're always talking about all of our differences. This way, it's sharing the rhythms of both cultures."

It might seem the least likely of juxtapositions, but at heart dance is dance. What's important is that Lambarena moves.

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Lambarena is part of the Cincinnati Ballet's Come Together Festival at the Aronoff Center on Friday and Saturday.