This must have been how it was back in the early days of modern dance: the passion of the movement being worn on the sleeve with the knowledge that this was something new, something different, something important.

Only instead of pioneers like Isadora Duncan or Ted Shawn, we saw the pulsating vernacular of Senegal's Compagnie Jant-Bi, who are virtual newcomers to the global dance scene, and Brooklyn's Urban Bush Women, who carry a piece of dance in their hearts on a daily basis.

Presented by the Pittsburgh Dance Council and August Wilson Center for African American Culture at the Byham Theater on Saturday night, this gave us a chance to make a connection between ethnic African dance, which many of us have seen, and its true outgrowth in a burgeoning contemporary African dance, which is about to make its presence felt.

Americans have borrowed from Africa's exciting rhythmic base, seen in tap dance, or the rippling muscular manipulations that run like streams of electricity through hip hop and many other social dance forms. And black choreographers like Ron Brown and Rennie Harris have taken their heritage to the concert stage with their own point of view.

But this performance was the real deal, an almost perfect balance of life and theatrical art.

It seemed to come directly from the both the soil and the soul of Africa. Even some of the Urban Bush Women, like native Zimbabwean Nora Chipaumire, carry fresh memories. And so the work was called "The scales of memory," bound, as it was, in a collective rainbow of African cultures. They successfully met on common choreographic ground to create a community and to celebrate that effort.

Much of the movement was generated by the dancers' own voices, with the seven men from Jant-Bi matched, stroke by powerful stroke, by seven Urban Bush Women. And so there was a comfort level in the movement, a personal investment in it.

But artistic directors Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Women and Germaine Acogny of Compagnie Jant-Bi codified it into an artistic whole. The dancers stood in a group at the start. There were sounds of waves, symbolic of the oceans that separate them -- but maybe not. Finally someone moved and the others began to fall in, a compelling beginning to the performance.

In the sections that followed, they proudly proclaimed their lineage in a cacophony of voices. The stomp of their feet resonated through the body, in strong legs and backs.

They ran, as if from violence, and the men held red shirts, dripping like blood, from their mouths. But they were sensual and playful, too.

And in the end, when the curtains flew open like a burst of sunshine, we heard the words, "I accept," and we understood a little more.