"Welcome to The Cotton Club. Where Crime Lords rub elbows with the rich and famous. Where deals are made, lives are traded. And the legends of jazz light up the night."

Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Casey Fenton, left, Sally Divers and Anna Karas rehearse "Stormy Weather" for Pittsburgh Dance Ensemble's production of the "Cotton Club on Ninth" at Dowe's on Ninth. Click photo for larger image. 'Cotton Club on Ninth' Where: Pittsburgh Dance Ensemble at Dowe's on Ninth, Downtown. When: Saturday with dinner and dancing at 6 p.m., followed by the performance at 8 p.m. and Sunday with dinner and dancing at 4 p.m., followed by the performance at 6 p.m. Tickets: $25 per couple, $15 individuals; call 412-334-5638.

So went the taglines for "The Cotton Club," Francis Ford Coppola's 1984 movie, which concentrated on predominantly white crime figures like Dixie Dwyer, Dutch Schultz and Abbadabba Berman who frequented the nightspot.

But most remember The Cotton Club, which has played on and off in Harlem since 1923, for its all-black cast of performers -- Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, Bill Robinson, Lena Horne and the Nicholas Brothers among them -- that, for a period of time from the '20s to the '40s, made it the place to see and be seen.

It's a subject that has intrigued Pittsburgh Dance Ensemble artistic director Greer Reed since she came back to Pittsburgh to teach at the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. A native who got her training at Pittsburgh CLO and Point Park University, she went on to Philadelphia's University of the Arts and Alvin Ailey Repertory Dance Ensemble before becoming a principal dancer at Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.

Upon her return she became involved with Kuntu Repertory Theater, choreographing highly successful productions of "Sophisticated Ladies" and "Sweet Thunder" and performing in "Bubblin' Brown Sugar."

"I learned so much about that era, about Duke Ellington and Pittsburgh's own Billy Strayhorn," Reed says. She watched the enthusiasm of the audiences but wanted to take it up a notch. "I wondered how neat it would be for the audience to come into The Cotton Club and be a part of the whole experience ... where they could actually get up and dance."

The idea milled in her head until she heard the house band at Dowe's on Ninth, where Sean Jones and Mission Statement were holding down the fort on Tuesdays. Immediately thinking that this would be "the perfect place," she talked with Al Dowe, who put his stamp of approval on the project, titled "Cotton Club on Ninth."

So did some of Pittsburgh's outstanding vocalists, eager to walk in the steps of Horne (Cathy Wysong-Charity), Waters (Christina Acosta) and Billie Holiday (Sandy Dowe). Etta Cox, Pittsburgh's own jazz legend, will play herself.

But while those songbirds may have made most of the headlines, The Cotton Club dancers provided plenty of fist-pumping excitement as well. So Reed, who will provide selections like her own "Stormy Weather," assembled a stable of choreographers. Buddy Thompson will open the show with "Jumpin' at the Woodside," while Heather Ferri will provide a finger-snapping finale to "It Don't Mean a Thing."

In between there will be a variety of numbers, including Beth Wright's "Rhythm Rules," where she will use card-playing guys to create a Stomp-in' rhythmic landscape with cups, cards and assorted props. Jones and Mission Statement will take the place of band greats like Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway.

They'll all join in transforming Dowe's into a virtual Cotton Club with all the swingin' and swayin' of the original, which, by the way, still marches to its own jazz drummers on 125th Street in Harlem even today. It's a great American tradition that may never go out of style.