Wolf Trap, America's National Arts Park, decided to spread the wealth with some of our country's greatest vistas on tonight's "Dance in America" program on WQED at 10 p.m.

Called "Wolf Trap's Face of America," it is a six-year project condensed to 90 minutes, where the riskiest of the arts moves to another level. From the cliffs of Yosemite National Park in California to underwater scenes of Coral Reef National Monument in the Virgin Islands, from interpreting flight at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk, N.C., to the steamy vapors of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park and the history of Virgin Islands National Park, the movement is melded with the landscape around it.

In some ways it is nothing new -- dance artists have often been inspired by what are called site-specific works, where they can tap the energy of the outdoor environment in new ways. Mostly it is a variation on an urban landscape -- after all, it's nice to have an audience.

"Face of America" connects not with an audience, but with the earth. It involved an array of choreographers -- Donald Byrd, Amelia Rudolph, Elizabeth Streb and Doug Varone -- and two groups, Halu O Kekuhi and the Olympic Synchronized Swim Team.

Each was filmed on location, then brought to Wolf Trap in Vienna, Va., to perform live against a large screen. The television program features insight into the creative process, snippets of the works on location and, in some instances, a glimpse at the finished product.

Rudolf and her company, Project Bandaloop, are used to working with verticality via harnesses and ropes. Their opening segment, set around Yosemite Falls with music by Native American flutist Robert Mirabal, was the most fragmented and risky, with few continuous movement phrases. The film crew concentrated on the artists dangling against a gorgeous backdrop.

Working with jazz composer/musician Steve Turre, Byrd took three dancers to a sugar plantation atop one of the Virgin Islands. There he framed his dancers in the ruins in almost a sculptural vein. The synchronized swimmers took to the water around the islands, where they formed a partnership with the film crew. Perhaps the patterns were those often seen in swimming pools, but here they were filmed upside down and in comparison with schools of fish.

Streb, who is famous for her pop action with props -- walls, chains and, in this case, trampolines, created the illusion of flight, albeit short, in swift patterns of succession. Again with the assistance of a savvy film crew, it became a rhythmic interpretation of flight, like human jets taking off from a series of different angles.

The most spiritual and sustained segment focused on the Hawai'ian company, where the viewer could watch full dances and listen to the chants, where the reverence for the land and for dance was unmistakable.

But during Varone's piece, the viewer could really get an idea of the total package. He incorporated the history of the Kentucky people with the Mammoth caves, which were used during periods of illness and as a wedding setting over the years. A large portion of the video was shown, with the dancers, much smaller, in performance. Varone took the music of Patty Loveless and constructed a dance specifically for video, then expertly tailored it in different perspectives and canonical phrases to be shown simultaneously.

"Faces of America" is as much a travelogue as a peek at the creative process of dance. What was most striking was that the two fit together so well.