Fabo Callabo, the title given to this weekend's collaborative dance concert at Geva Theatre, was organized cooperatively by five leading local dance companies seeking to further what they recognize as the flourishing dance scene in Rochester. The five groups in the event are Bill Evans Dance, BIODANCE, FuturPointe Dance, Geomantics Dance Theater, and PUSH Physical Theatre. Their work can all be categorized as contemporary dance, but within that realm they occupy very different niches.

There is the renowned rhythm tap and modern dance of Bill Evans Dance; the multi-genre, urban-themed performances of FuturPointe Dance; and the gently nuanced, fine-tuned choreography of Missy Pfohl Smith's BIODANCE, which often addresses social issues. The contemporary choreography of Geomantics Dance Theater's Richard Haisma contains strong theatrical elements, while PUSH Physical Theatre straddles the fence between dance and theater, consistently folding mime and physical theater into the company's work.

Mark Cuddy, artistic director of Geva Theatre Center, has opened his doors to contemporary dance several times in the past several years, hosting several local dance companies on Geva's Nextstage theater.

"I want the Nextstage to be the home for small, dynamic dance/movement companies that ultimately make a terrific complement to our own theater productions," he says. "If we can establish a consistent venue for them, I believe their audience will grow." Cuddy expects the Fabo Collabo performances to sell out.

At Fabo Callabo, each group will show two pieces or excerpts that will total up to 15 minutes of performance time. In the name of fairness, and to ensure a smoothly flowing collaboration, the order of the pieces was determined by outside curator Elizabeth Zimmer, a longtime dance critic for New York City's Village Voice.

"People in our industry are very connected to their own aesthetic," says Darren Stevenson, artistic director of PUSH Physical Theatre. "When you're dealing with eight choreographers who have developed distinct bodies of work, we realized that we needed an outside eye to program the work."

Speaking from New York City, Zimmer told City that she had already been familiar with some of the choreographers' work based on her attendance at Nazareth College Arts Center Dance Festival this past July.

"A lot of the performers are fine dancers, and some of the choreographers quite interesting," she says.

It was Geomantics' Richard Haisma who instigated Fabo Collabo. His big idea was to contribute to the gathering force of the local dance scene by presenting a multi-company dance concert in which each group would benefit from exposure to the others' audiences. The common thread uniting the companies was that they had all performed on Geva's stage at some point in the recent past.

Also of significance, 17 of the dancers who will be performing in Fabo Collabo are currently, or were once, students at SUNY Brockport's Department of Dance. Haisma has taught at the college in the past; Bill Evans is currently a professor there, and he once taught Heather Roffe of FuturPointe Dance. BIODANCE's Smith told City that she thinks the high level of dance education in the area - her company includes graduates of both Brockport and Hobart and William Smith Colleges - is a contributing factor in the steady growth of Rochester dance in over the last few years.

Smith began BIODANCE in New York City in 2002, but in 2004 she relocated with the company to Rochester, where she has been ever since. "Dance has beautifully infiltrated the Rochester arts and culture scene," Smith says. "The excitement of this mini-dance renaissance in Rochester is contagious and inspiring."

Smith cites the number of local festivals featuring dance in collaboration with other arts - such as Vision of Sound at Hochstein School, Image/Movement/Sound at RIT, and the newer Nazareth dance festival in the summer - as further fuel for the fire.

As further proof of the vitality of dance in Rochester, she reports that this past summer, the New York State Dance Force - a group dedicated to increasing exposure for dancers across New York - held its annual meeting in Rochester, requesting not only a showcase of local dance companies, but also a panel of choreographers to discuss how and why dance is working so well in a mid-size city like ours.

PUSH's Darren Stevenson agrees that Rochester is a great place for dance. Born and raised in England, he has lived and danced in cities across the United States, including St. Louis, Charlotte, and Atlanta.

"Rochester is an arts-friendly city," he says. "This is the first place I've lived where people seem to understand what I do for a living. Usually, people ask what I do for a living after I've told them what I do for a living. Not in Rochester. It's the first place."

Each company in Fabo Collabo recognizes the upswing of quality dance in the area, and expresses a commitment to furthering that movement. "Art doesn't happen in a void," says Roffe, one of the three directors of FuturPointe Dance. "The more we put in the bucket, the fuller the bucket gets."

"Cross-pollination is crucial," says fellow director FuturePointe director N'Jelle Gage.

FuturPointe is the newest group performing in Fabo Collabo. The company formed in 2009 with the goal of broadening the appeal and spectatorship of contemporary dance. The group's eclectic work, rife with urban, cultural, and international flavors and influences, throbs with upbeat energy and intelligent humor. Members hail from far-flung locales including Jamaica, Guyana, the Ukraine, and New Orleans, as well as New York City. Guy Thorne, another director, left burgeoning fame with Garth Fagan Dance to follow his own path, seeing part of the mission of the new company as widening the appeal of dance and broadening its audiences.

"We actively try to pull people into dance as an art form," says Thorne. "We kindle their interest and appetite. Get them fired up, create a buzz."

The directors of FuturPointe argue that the future of dance is in collaboration, and that is something they embrace within their company, within the dance world, and within the wider art world. To date, FuturePointe has infused visual art, opera, fine cuisine, and fashion into its performances. The company has danced on sidewalks, along the canal towpath, and in art galleries and restaurants.

The artistic directors involved in Fabo Callabo have a wide range of experience. FuturPointe is a youngster - a talented youngster, but a youngster nonetheless - compared to Bill Evans Dance and Geomantics Dance Theatre. Evans started his company in Seattle more than 35 years ago; Haisma was already touring with the Murray Louis Dance Company in the 1970's, performing with Rudolf Nureyev to Louis's choreography on Broadway. Geomantics evolved from the local Calabash Dance Theatre, which Haisma started in 2000. During the 1980's and 90's, he toured his own solo, evening-long performance throughout Europe and the United States.

Haisma sat down with City recently to discuss the works he will be showing in Fabo Collabo. His longer piece is called "Do Animals Meditate V," the latest version of the dance project he's been creating and recreating for more than 15 years, performed to the live music of local experimental rock band Night Gallery. Haisma wants to be crystal clear on one point: at no time in his piece do the dancers imitate animals. Only the mental images he uses to stimulate production of his choreography contains animals - animals gathered around a lake at twilight.

"All choreographers use images to help them," Haisma says. "I imagine this symphony of animals all connected, the ensemble of human communication."

Geomantics Dance Theatre's other piece in the program is "Truck Stop," a solo by Whitney Denesha danced to the music of My Brightest Diamond. This theatrical piece portrays a figure whose life is filled with drudgery, and her desire to transcend it.

"I wanted to risk doing an emotionally powerful dance without being overly sentimental," said Haisma.

Bill Evans is a recognized expert in rhythm tap, an improvisational-based tap form that he has studied, borrowed from, and added to for a good portion of his life. "After years of living this work, I'm fluent in conversing in the style now, creating in the style," Evans says.

At Fabo his company will perform one rhythm-tap piece, his 1997 work "Los Ritmos Calientes," along with the longer work "Colony," created by Evans as a result of his work with the Kahurangi Maori Dance Company in New Zealand. "Colony" addresses the fate of indigenous people around the world who are stripped of language, belief systems, and traditional ways of living through colonialism.

"When I was in New Zealand, the young dancers took me to their sacred community center and showed me photographs of their ancestors," Evans says. "These images of those Polynesian warriors with tattooed faces, dressed in British Victorian clothing and posing in stiff British-style tradition, are forever burned into my memory."

Evans has received a Guggenheim fellowship and lifetime achievement awards from both Dance Teacher magazine and the National Dance Education Organization.

Duets will highlight FuturPointe's time onstage in Fabo Collabo. In "Sahdji," an African love story with an urban twist set to William Grant Still's ballet for chorus and orchestra, Thorne will perform with Melinda Phillips. The company premiered the piece last year with Buffalo Opera Unlimited to live choral and orchestral music.

FuturPointe will also present two sections of Roffe's "Tangere," including "Symbiosis," a duet she dances with Thorne. The choreography is inspired by Roffe's love of Argentine tango; she has taught master classes in the art form for years. "Tangere" is the Latin word for "to touch, physically or emotionally."

One of BIODANCE's pieces for Fabo Callabo is "Absent Presence," choreographed by Smith in 2004 and reworked in 2007. The work uses movement to explore the dualities of freedom and intimacy, weakness and strength, and closeness and conflict.

"At times we shut out those who need us the most and disallow the intimacy we, in actuality, need and crave," Smith says. "Emotions change without warning between aggression, passivity, indifference, playfulness and intimacy."

BIODANCE will also be presenting "IT" - as in "information technology" - which was choreographed by Smith in 2009. "‘IT' is a dance that ponders the effects of technology on our humanity, relationships, and development as it slowly replaces human encounters with nature and with one another," Smith says.

The work will feature live, commissioned music for computer, keyboard, and percussion by composer Mark Olivieri, video by NYC filmmaker Jesse Spielman, and a set by Smith.

Smith has performed and taught dance all over the world. She currently serves as University of Rochester's Director of the Program of Dance and Movement.

Stevenson formed PUSH with his wife, Heather, in 2000. The company's latest work, "Web," premieres at Fabo Collabo. Stevenson calls it a departure from PUSH's standard work because it involves props.

"Almost always we deal with just our bodies," he says. "If we need a set and props we make them out of our bodies. But with ‘Web' we're using climbing harnesses and ropes to attach performers to each other. This creates a web of humans attached to humans, both literally and figuratively. It's disturbing imagery. People no longer free to be themselves. Tethered."

"In violent confrontation you end up with these fairly intimate connections with a person you don't want any connections with. This can last years after the incident occurs. In this piece we are exploring what aggressive posturing looks like, what nurturing looks like, what makes people feel safe or unsafe in a relationship," Stevenson says.

The work is intended to raise open-ended questions. Stevenson expects audience members to personalize the work based on their own life experiences. He pondered the point that even to portray violence on the stage, a certain level of it had to be utilized.

"To show violence, we have to do just the opposite," he says. "We have to be in control, respectful and careful of each other's bodies and emotions. Even so, our dancer Jonathan [Lowery] would get rope burns and bruises. We could only rehearse so long before he would need to heal."

PUSH's accomplishments include "-abled," an exploration of addiction using medical equipment such as crutches and walkers, which had a sold-out two-week run at Geva in 2008. In 2009, the year Stevenson and his wife received the Performing Artist of the Year Award from Arts and Cultural Council of Greater Rochester, PUSH returned to Geva with its rendition of "Dracula." The company has been doing education outreach in schools for years; recently it became affiliated with Young Audiences of Rochester.

Stevenson compares the opportunity to see so many varied dance works in one evening to a wine tasting. "You get to sample each company's work and find out whose aesthetic excites or pleases you the most. Then you go back and see them again throughout the year."

Fabo Callabo

Featuring Bill Evans Dance, BIODANCE, FuturPointe Dance, Geomantics Dance Theater, and PUSH Physical Theatre

Thursday, January 12-Sunday, January 15

Nextstage, Geva Theater Center, 75 Woodbury Blvd.

Thu 7 p.m., Fri 7 p.m., Sat 2:30 & 7 p.m., Sun 2:30 p.m. | Tickets start at $25 | 232-4382, gevatheatre.org