Taking dance chances from three continents

The Walker Art Center's New World Dance: New York series this weekend showcases choreographers from different countries -- Nami Yamamoto (Japan), Nora Chipaumire (Zimbabwe), and lowercase-named luciana achugar (Uruguay) -- who have found a creative home in the American city that never stops moving.

Their varied approaches make for a surprise-filled program, starting with an excerpt from Yamamoto's 2008 work "a howling flower." Although there are four performers, the focus is on "Tony," a potbellied marionette made of spare parts -- taut springs for legs, a tiny violin spine, and a strangely expressive porcelain doll head. He lies crumpled on the floor, but once Matt Acheson takes the strings this inanimate being becomes a dance partner capable of subtlety and impish charm.

Still, Yamamoto doesn't play it cute. She highlights the fragile tenderness and innocent curiosity in the interactions between performers (particularly Ryutaro Mishima) and puppet, and in so doing unleashes the imagination. Acheson may be manipulating every move but that fact is forgotten. Under the lights, Tony is magically real.

Chipaumire's "Convoys, Curfews and Roadblocks" offers another transformation. The work draws on personal experiences during Zimbabwe's second war of liberation, and the choreographer relies mostly on her expressive body to tell the story of struggle. She hurls imaginary rocks and raises a defiant fist, but she also reveals vulnerability. One can almost visualize the weight of a history marred by colonialism and violence when she hunches over. Still, Chipaumire is neither bowed in spirit nor deterred from speaking truth. She may be self-exiled but her memories follow her everywhere, including onto the stage, and she firmly controls them.

"A Super Natural Return to Love" (2004) is achugar's take on the poetic messiness of being a woman. Her group of dancers, all dressed in uniforms and hairnets, lean against the wall like Laverne and Shirley on a smoke break. They leave and return with pockets filled with red paint, their fingers stained. They form a somewhat bizarre yet organized chorus, yet soon enough the paint smears the wall, hair flies free, and the movement assumes a blunt sexuality. At times the work wanders but jells when the dancers embrace the madness. In an evening defined by strong female artistic perspectives, achugar's "uncivilized women" provoke the most extreme reaction.

Caroline Palmer writes regularly about dance.