"Jacob's Ladder" is choreographed by Rennie Harris.

By Jane Vranish
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Unlike dance, visual art captures a subject -- a landscape, an abstract or a portrait -- at a point in time. But painter Jacob Lawrence literally moved from one piece to the next, just as he did so often in real life. The thread that connected them was one of struggle and freedom with dignity. It was reflected in the gesture and rhythm of the paintings and the subjects they portrayed, from "The Migration Series" to the streets of Harlem, were he found his love of art.

	Dayton Contemporary Dance's "We Ain't Goin' Home but We Finna to Get the Hell Up Outta Here" was inspired by artist Jacob Lawrence. Click photo for larger image. Dayton Contemporary Dance Company Program: The August Wilson Center for African American Culture presents "c-ography, n. The dances of Jacob Lawrence." Where: Byham Theater, Downtown. When: 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $15-$40; 412-456-6666 or www.pgharts.org.

The process took six years, but Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, presented by the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, is reinterpreting Lawrence's unremitting sense of motion through dance in "c?-ography, n. The dances of Jacob Lawrence." The Saturday night concert at the Byham Theater will feature a quartet of African-American choreographers: Donald Byrd, Tony nominee for "The Color Purple"; Rennie Harris, Philadelphia hip-hop pioneer in concert dance; Kevin Ward, artistic director of DCDC; and Reggie Wilson, New York choreographer who specializes in what he sometimes calls "post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dance."

Lawrence's parents participated in the early-20th-century migration of African- Americans from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North, where they hoped to find work. The artist eventually landed among the remnants of the Harlem Renaissance, a time of great artistic and intellectual activity.

His mother enrolled him in an after-school program at a local community center, Utopia Children's House, where he chose art as his activity. It was there, under teacher and mentor Charles Alston, that Lawrence found his calling. Lawrence's first successful project was a series of paintings, "Toussaint L'Ouverture," based on Francis Dominique Toussaint, who liberated slaves on the island of Haiti. Lawrence followed that with similar series on Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and John Brown.

Perhaps his most widely known paintings were from "The Migration Series," with 60 panels that make a powerful statement on a piece of American history.

Lawrence would be the first African-American to receive a large grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the first elected as a member, in 1965. President George Bush presented him with the National Medal of Arts in 1990, only a few of his many awards. He finished his career as a professor of art at the University of Washington in Seattle and died in 2000 at age 82.

His was a rich source of inspiration for the DCDC choreographers in the production that premiered Feb. 3 in Dayton. The committee chose them for their history of incorporating African-American themes, use of narrative and design sense.

The program begins with Byrd's "J Lawrence Paint (Harriet Tubman Remix)" and focuses, as the title suggests, primarily on the Tubman series. "Donald took the most narrative path," says Ward. "He used the paintings as storyboards, filling in the spaces with movement."

Ward follows with "Continuing Education," where he looks at the process of creation and "took the liberty of linking" several Lawrence paintings from the '60s during the civil rights era. The segment centers on "Dreams," a painting that shows a man and a woman in bed but locked in a nightmare, as ghoulish figures dance above their heads.

Wilson produced "We Ain't Goin' Home but We Finna to Get the Hell Up Outta Here," a treatment of "The Migration Series." Wilson questions, "How is culture transferred? What gets retained as you travel, what gets left behind?" As Ward explains, "You get a sense that they kept what was important with them as they did travel."

Harris concludes the evening with "Jacob's Ladder," which was inspired by Lawrence's artwork and life. Notes Ward, "He had a prodigious output that, although some of the subject matter that he treated could be tragic, all in all it was a humanistic and celebratory viewpoint."

Lawrence's art is folded into the scenic and lighting designs so that the movement can forge a new connection. "You can see a sense of Cubism in the way Byrd hoists a dancer overhead at an odd angle," Ward explains.

Lawrence's bold strokes and colors will become living and breathing art on the stage.