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Saturday, May 18, 2002

By Jane Vranish

"I love to dance," says 44-year-old choreographer Sarah Skaggs, "so I took a step back and looked at my work over the last 12 years."

	Sarah Skaggs WHERE: The Andy Warhol Museum, North Side. WHEN: 8 tonight.Tickets: $15; 412- 237-8300. DANCE SITE: www.sarahskaggs dance.org

What emerged was an autobiography of sorts -- a rare look at the inner recesses of this New York City choreographer and an intimate portrait to be presented at The Andy Warhol Museum tonight.

Skaggs is perhaps best known for her "social" dances that begin with audience participation, then center on her company, only to finish with the audience clamoring to get back into action.

The idea arose from a sketch by Skaggs.

"I teach the company a solo," she explains. "From there we start to flesh it out. It's like a playwright writing all the lines, where my five dancers take different characters."

Her Warhol performance will consist of those solo sketches from the '90s, when she "put the work inside specific places." But Skaggs began her career in 1984 with the idea that "certain choreographic passages were just tangled, unpruned thickets of steps." She explored Eastern European and Far Eastern folk dances, incorporating elements into her mix.

The result was "Higher Ground," the event that required a willing audience. Post-concert activities even included a "dance party free-for-all that integrated dance into the everyday."

Audiences at The Warhol will see a compilation of solos, in which Skaggs will talk about the context in which the dances were created.

Those in attendance also will get an explanation of "why people dance," related to Skaggs' work in Asia and Prague, Czech Republic, where she studied folk dance. And they'll get to see dance "up close -- the hands, the shoulders, the back, the inner workings of movement," the vulnerability of it all.

Skaggs cautions that she doesn't have a "fusion" style. "My movement leaks out of the body in certain ways," she says. "People could relate right away to tai chi or simply to the kinetic response."

The choreographer, who lives near Ground Zero, site of the former World Trade Center, will premiere one work composed after Sept. 11. Skaggs watched the events unfold from her apartment. "I couldn't move or dance for a month," she recalls.

"Bow" is the result, a solo that is "a little limp" but honors what happened.

Jane Vranish is the Post-Gazette dance critic.