Dance - Dancing through Down Under

About a year ago, Jhon Stronks, director of the dance company “there ... in the sunlight,” sat with me on the patio of Decatur’s Java Monkey and told me about his plans to move to Australia. He had been in Atlanta for three years, dancing again after a two-year hiatus brought on by some bad experiences in a California company with a domineering director. His return to dance had been fiercely independent, and I heard a restlessness in his voice, saw it in his body.

Rejecting all schools of movement, Stronks had set out to discover the authentic vocabulary of his slender, 6-foot-2-inch body. He bent high on his waist, mixed an undulating torso with striking straight lines on his limbs, and articulated his hands in intricate figures that looked like the tracings of someone suffering from OCD. His movement was fresh, original and exciting.

But in the larger forms of his choreography, Stronks’ independence revealed a tentativeness, a fear, perhaps, of losing himself again. He danced apart from his company, in opposite corners of the stage or tag teaming in time.

Recently, Stronks and I met on the patio again. He seemed at ease in his chair, more at peace than I’d ever seen him. Teaching at the Warren/Holyfield Boys & Girls Club of East Atlanta, he had been asking himself what it is that “communities do for people when they work, and what communities prevent people from becoming when they don’t.”

Somewhere along the way, he figured out that he could share his struggles with kinesthetic and emotional authenticity with other dancers, and that his sharing of intimate concerns could build a healthy community ... and better dance.

The revelation is apparent in A Stirring in My Soul, which “there ... in the sunlight” stages at the Beam. Revisited works, such as the quintet “What does your soul look like?” find Stronks in much closer conversation with his company. And in a new solo, “A View from the Edge” — traditional African movement set to Vivaldi — Stronks now embraces the contributions of African dance, ballet and hip-hop to his own unique synthesis.

Oh, and at our latest meeting, Stronks never once mentioned Australia. “there ... in the sunlight” presents A Stirring in My Soul Sept. 18-19 and Sept. 24-26, Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m. The Beam, 750 Glenwood Ave. $10-$15. Proceeds benefit the Warren/ Holyfield Boys & Girls Club of East Atlanta. 404-668-9317. thereinthesunlight@yahoo.com.