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By MARY THERESE BIEBEL; Times Leader Staff Writer
Friday, June 13, 1997     Page: 1C

Somewhere in the sun-drenched Caribbean, at any time of day, a musician
might begin to play and passers-by spontaneously combust into an impromptu
dance.
   
“We are very physical, happy people,” says Luis Bravo, a native of Puerto
Rico and director of the local Bravo!Dance Conservatory.
    Bravo expresses that gusto in a “Caribbean techno-jazz” piece he has
choreographed for the company’s “Dance Around the World” performance, to be
staged 2 p.m. Sunday at Wyoming Seminary’s Buckingham Performing Arts Center
in Kingston.
   
“It’s a big blend of Caribbean folk dance and reggae music,” Bravo said.
“It’s extremely high impact, extremely physical. You do it and you try to keep
up. Ten minutes and you’re dying.”
   
Bravo and his wife, fellow choreographer Nana Badrena, recently departed
for a month in Puerto Rico, where for the seventh year they will hold an arts
camp for low-income youth.
   
“We kind of give back to our Puerto Rican people what they gave us as we
were growing up. We thank God we made it,” Badrena says.
   
During the past two weeks, while the couple have been gone, choreographers
Trinette Singleton, Andrew Buleza and Bernardine Vojtko have guided 33 young
dancers through rehearsals of classical ballet and international character
dances.
   
Buleza has choreographed a Ukrainian number similar to those he performed
with the Duquesne University Tamburiztans during his college days.
   
It’s a gopak, a harvest dance old-time farmers would have performed around
a bonfire. “They danced around it and they each, especially the men, showed
off their strength and agility,” he says.
   
Eighteen-year-old dancer Frank Labaty will do just that when he executes a
series of crouch-kicks similar to those John Travolta performed decades ago in
the movie “Saturday Night Fever.”
   
Already, Labaty pleased the crowd at his Seton Catholic High School prom
with a demonstration.
   
Buleza plans to have dancer Sharon Rudda, 16, spin on her toes as long as
she can. He’ll ask the audience to clap along as she performs ballet turns in
rapid succession. She did 80 in a recent practice and might reach 100, he
predicts, with the audience’s encouragement.
   
Breathless after a recent rehearsal of the Caribbean number, Rudda and a
handful of other teenage girls discuss how they feel about learning different
kinds of dancing, other than ballet. Not everyone is happy.
   
“I like ballet and that’s it,” admits Nicole Levi, 16, of Lake Silkworth.
   
Dance instructor Singleton wants the students to be flexible enough to
stretch in other directions, but it’s not always easy.
   
“These are basically ballet bunheads,” she says. “It’s been a real
challenge for them to learn to move in ways that are different from ballet.”
   
Others like to try something new, and shake their hair free from the bun
every once in a while.
   
Nova Halliwell, 14, of Nanticoke, says she could see herself giving the
kind of impromptu performance Luis Bravo described earlier.
   
“I’d have the castanets and everything,” Halliwell says. “I’d be going down
the street.”
   
If You Go What: “Dance Around the World” Who: Bravo!Dance Conservatory
students. Where: Wyoming Seminary’s Buckingham Performing Arts Center, Sprague
Avenue, Kingston.
   
When: 2 p.m. Sunday
   
Tickets: Adults, $5; children 6 and under, $3. Available at door.
   
Info: 826-0028.
   
TIMES LEADER/LEWIS GEYER
   
Nova Halliwell, 14, of Nanticoke, practices the Caribbean technojazz
routine which will be one of the international numbers to be featured Sunday
at the Bravo!Dance Company’s performance.