By Jessica Lockhart

It was a mind-blowing experience. Countless times in dance performances a choreographer strives to make movements on stage mimic music. But Dianne McIntyre was dramatizing a much deeper, more organic connection.

In the Same Tongue, Dianne McIntyre, at the Paramount Theater Boston, September 29

Dianne McIntyre, In the Same Tongue. Photo: Kameron Herndon, courtesy Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Dianne McIntyre’s dance career has spanned five decades and her latest performance reveals what has motivated her over all those years: MUSIC. In this autobiographical work, her dance company and a live jazz quartet share the stage. Throughout the performance we hear recordings of McIntyre talking about her career and what motivated her art. “Dance exists in the music, and dance is music moving,” she says at one point. In The Same Tongue is about the fusion of two languages –dance and music are one.

As a child, McIntyre danced while listening to all kinds of music. As a young adult she was introduced to jazz, and it turned her world upside down. Accordingly, In the Same Tongue begins with a group of musicians on stage: horns, bass, and drums. The five dancers then appear, moving slowly in silence, suggesting that they were both searching and wandering. The music begins and the musicians move forward, joining the dancers on stage. As the trumpet played a solo, one dancer sprang to life, as if hearing the sounds energized the body. The interaction, to the audience, was ambiguous. Who was leading who? Who was doing the initiating? It felt as if the pair were joined together, working as one unit. Then comes a drum solo, and another dancer took similar flight. Dance and music could not live without each other. It was a mind-blowing experience. Countless times in dance performances a choreographer strives to make movements on stage mimic music. But McIntyre was dramatizing a much deeper, more organic connection. Contrivance dropped away — she drew a much more spontaneous, innate connection.

Having the musicians play as they stood next to the dancers and interact with the performers made for a simple, beautiful, and revelatory event. It was an exploration of how dance and music speak to each other. The score was so good, and the dancers so skilled, that the inevitable call and response took on enormous power. They were working together in dazzling union, an emotional dynamism. It felt like we were at a jazz club, hearing a wide range of music: bebop, avant-garde, and sacred. The dancers exuded enormous energy and grace as they moved from joyous abandon and grief stricken to out-and-out wailing. The performance made good on McIntyre’s claim in the program notes: “This tapestry of woven elements, staged through a lens of Black culture, is about dance and music speaking to one another and how the language of human beings creates worlds of beauty, alienation, harmony, tension and/or peace.”

In the Same Tongue is made of a succession of vignettes that tackle different eras and artistic legacies. The pacing of the program changes and morphs depending on what kind of music is being explored: the section titles were “The Club and the East,” “Revolution/Manifesto,” and “Scream.” The music reflected the post–Civil War heritage of slavery, ’20s Harlem salons, and the Black Arts Movement of the ’60s and ’70s.

Diedre Murray composed the score; poetry was provided by playwright Ntozake Shange. Two sections near the end of this performance featured four guest dancers from the Boston area. The instrumental group was directed by Gerald Brazen, and it featured Cleave Guyton Jr, Rona Mahdi, and Reggie Nicholson. The outstanding dancers were Demetria Hopkins, Christopher Page-Saunders, Kyle H. Martin, Brianna Rhodes, and Kamryn Vaulx.

Jessica Lockhart is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Dance Criticism and has a BA in Communication from the University of Southern Maine. Lockhart is a Maine Association of Broadcasters award-winning independent journalist. Currently, she also works as program director at WMPG Community radio.