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The dance company's neighborly relationship with the city goes at least as far back as a four-year residency they conducted with the Pittsburgh Dance Council, from 1996-1999.

Students who attended their Danco Dance & Art Camps in Wilkinsburg and the Hill District got to experience the company's distinctive style, a heady alchemy of balletic precision, jazz shimmy and African tribal groove.

"We spent four years in and out of Pittsburgh and Greensburg, Slippery Rock and Erie, creating an audience for them," says Philadanco executive artistic director Joan Myers Brown. "The audience wasn't as diverse as they wanted it to be. We worked at Hosanna House and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. We went to a lot of places and took dance with us."

The company's members will be doing the same for the African American Cultural Arts Center, who hosts Philadanco at the Byham Theater on Saturday. The 8 p.m. show marks the opening of the center's first full-length season as arts presenters.

"Philadanco has a great history in Pittsburgh," says Neil Barclay, president and chief executive officer of the center. "The Dance Council presented them and did summer camps here, and (they) just have a really strong following within Pittsburgh."

Barclay knows Brown and her company from his days as an associate director of the University of Texas Performing Arts Center in Austin.

"They seemed like a natural for us to start out what we're doing," Barclay says. "I think it's just an amazingly exciting program for people to see."

The concert is bookended by selections from "We Too Dance: African American Men in Dance." Eleo Pomare's "Back to Bach" and Christopher Huggins' "Blue," which open and close the show, respectively. The troupe also will perform "Gatekeepers" by Ron Brown and a piece for the women, the oscillating "Batty Moves" by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.

"The dance takes its title from the Jamaican vernacular," Brown says. "When a woman walks by they say, 'Mon, that woman's batty moves.' It talks about the women using their rear ends." A quick pause, and she adds, "It's a ballet I can't do everywhere. The audience has to be more receptive."

Saturday's show will cap a two-day residency that includes a free student matinee performance at 10 a.m. Friday.

Brown founded the Philadelphia Dance Company in 1970 to create more opportunities for inner city youth. It began as a ballet company, but has since shifted to modern dance, although ballet remains the bedrock of their training.

"I love the virtuosity of the dancing," Barclay says. "Physically, it's very, very demanding, very precise, well-articulated choreography. They are technicians of the first order. I like the way they utilize music and the way they sort of take the stage, the energy and the vitality of the company that jumps off the stage at the audience."

The dancers' prowess and control can be attributed at least partially to the fact that they perform the work of different choreographers. In addition to the work of resident choreographer Milton Myers, their repertory includes dances by Elisa Monte, Talley Beatty, Louis Johnson, Gene Hill Sagan and Pearl Primus.

"When you're showing the work of four or five choreographers one night, you can select the experience you're sharing," Brown says. "When you're doing the work of a single choreographer, by the third or fourth dance, the vocabulary sort of runs out. Every choreographer has a limited vocabulary within their style. They start going by rote to 'that step I always can count on.' "

"She trains great dancers," says Carolelinda Dickey, who was executive director of the Dance Council from 1987 to 1999. "She has always sustained a level of professionalism in her company that I love. She nurtures young choreographers."

Brown does such a good job that student dancers in Danco II, the apprentice company, get snapped up by companies such as Alvin Ailey or the Dance Theatre of Harlem before she can hire them herself. More than 600 dancers audition annually.

Asked whether such a thing as black dance exists, Brown replies, "The ongoing question is, is black dance what black dancers do and what black choreographers create? Is it dance that is danced by black people? That has yet to be determined."

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