Nothing in a Jones creation is trivial, even the casual throw away gesture evinces force, intent and focus. Next to Indian dance, Jones seems to understand just what shaped, honed hand gesture can convey to rivet the eye, extend the body movement and its power and place in space. Good lighting only enhances the sculptural impact.

Initially the surprise is visual and sartorial: all three dancers appear with shaved heads gloriously placed on necks, shoulders and remarkably flexible torsos. Marigold to a zinnia red-orange are hues for pajama-legged trousers providing fluid accents to body and gesture.

That Jones is an artist is never in doubt; that he is an African- American artist is also patent in his musical, thematic choices and use of the body. He utilizes the extraordinary undulating isolations typical in African movement, selecting, polishing them. In the opening “With the Good Lord”, Jones uses the Rock of Ages hymn and colloquial patter to weave an extraordinary tapestry of body, movement and gestural pas de trois. That Leah Cox has mastered such complex movement idiom is due to her remarkably flexible body, and also an equally felicitous empathy. She blends with her partner Donald C. Shorter, Jr. in the later pas de deux as well in the intensely rigorous pas de trois exchange with Jones. The combination of these three beautifully formed bodies moving and gesturing, framed by stark lighting, enhancing their movement like etchings, is spell binding. One catches irony, wit, and social commentary in the dialogue of “The Nazz,” though some terms remain outside white folks’ vocabulary. Shorter is equally tall, built with a back silhouette one sees in National Geographic issues on African tribal life. (The last time I saw such an excellent dancer with that body build was Alan Howard, the late Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo principal dancer of the 50's.)

Do You Be (2004), performed by Jones to the Meredith Monk’s music, largely the falsetto warble of Middle Eastern women and belly dance exponents, sees Jones in a felt hat, trousers and recorded on a screen fading from him naked to him in costume. Either image displays the powerful shoulders tapering to his washboard diaphragm and small waist, a combination most weight lifters would kill for. Jones also employs his silhouette lit and framed, to great effect.

It is 22, (2005) which seals the evening’s adventure as the terrible is told with brilliant finesse. Jones commences with 22 gestures which borrow from Indian Dance, “the demon of ignorance “ a Shiva posture, “Karsavina” and “The Imperial Box,” en ecarte, as well as a bent gesture with pointed finger Jones labels ‘wrong choice.” Jones employs his 22 gestures to interweave tales of South African genocide and Southern sharecropper cannibalism over which ghostly diagrams of small children float enforcing the bizarre, all too likely histories of violence and desperation. Following this section, a young couple next to me crawled over me and departed.

The duet of Leah Cox and Donald Shorter Jr. was danced to folk songs from Madagascar, traditional Muhur-Persian music and funeral chants from Cote d’Ivoire. Essentially moving as opposites, with identical music and gestures, the effect was sympathetic, haunting, flawlessly executed.

As the final tour de force, Jones danced to Bach’s D Minor Partita for Solo Violin, performed by Nurit Pacht, her slight frame moving across the stage in periodic opposition to Jones, but stationery for extended periods. Awareness of Jones’ use of space and movement supports the lengthy solo but does not deter the fascination in the incorporation of body and gestural passages from the previous sections of the work. Towards the end one does begin to wonder about the endurance factor, but the pacing and gestures continue to surprise and sustain Jones to the final draw of the bow across the strings.

Almost immediately some stood with others clapping enthusiastically for a warm ovation, not only testimony to superb performers, but to the strength of message and its striking use as theater.