Power of Their Passion

David Brown is standing still and breathing hard, his powerfully built torso soaked in sweat. Elisa Monte, a lean and intense-looking woman, emerges from darkness and grabs his thighs and then his arms. They tumble to the floor, intoxicated by their love making.

Brown and Monte are husband and wife, dancer and choreographer--and this moment from a piece called “Treading” represents both an idealization of their intimacy and a vision of the blatantly visceral style of dance that Monte has come to represent in the last eight years.

Her nine-member, New York-based company can be seen Tuesday at the UC Riverside University Theatre on its first West Coast tour.

“ ‘Treading’ did seem very raw to people when it was first done (in 1979),” recalls Monte, referring to a duet that is now part of the Alvin Ailey and San Francisco Ballet repertories. “But I really don’t think of doing a sexy dance when choreographing.

“I tend to think there’s a difference between sexuality and sensuality,” she adds, “sensuality having to do with the body and its general response to the world, and sexuality being more specifically related to procreation and intercourse.”

But Brown thinks there’s a more profound sexual underpinning to Monte’s work. “I’ve always seen ‘Treading’ as the painful, joyous act of Elisa giving birth,” he offers, “not necessarily to a human, or an idea, but to herself as an artist and choreographer in her own right.”

Monte was renowned as a principal dancer with the Lar Lubovitch, Pilobolus and Martha Graham dance companies before forming her own troupe in 1982. She firmly established herself as a creator during a concert at the 1984 Brooklyn Academy of Music season when she broke out of the mold of the politically conservative, balletic, AIDS-saturated ‘80s. Sexuality on the dance floor had clearly not died with the sexual revolution.

“I believe that male and female . . . no, human sexuality . . . has a great deal to do with my sense of dance rhythm and drama,” Monte says. “But I think that instinct comes less from the libido than from a very strong feeling that dance should not be decorative or just entertaining.”

“It may sound somewhat corny,” she says, “but I think artists have a responsibility to dispel the demons of society through the seriousness of our gestures--through lessons about love and hate, and through our honesty in dealing with our bodies and the pleasures they do in fact offer.”

If she sounds like reconstituted Martha Graham, her message hits a generation facing AIDS, substance abuse and the need to conserve dwindling natural resources.

“The body contains a lot of hidden messages,” she says, emphasizing that “even if sex isn’t always possible” there’s a need “to demonstrate the deep connection between us” in order to “forestall self-destruction.”

Apparently, this drive to “make dances about the body and survival” has been partly fueled by Monte’s growing love of Indonesia, cultivated during tours to Java and Bali in ’86 and ’87.

But there may be another source of Monte’s unabashed sensuality on stage: her refusal to deny the passion between her and Brown.

The two have shared her vision for more than 10 years; Brown is now associate director of her company. They also have a 5-year-old girl, Elia, who has accompanied them throughout their tours.

Brown, a soft-spoken Jamaican who has himself choreographed for the company, has long been a favorite of audiences who find him one of the more strikingly handsome men in any modern dance company. He’s also applauded for his prowess and keen intelligence on stage.

As Monte’s partner and the company’s most outspoken leader, he has plenty of opinions about how sexuality jump-starts the works he dances.

“A good dancer dances for himself and is totally naked,” like “a great stripper who can’t see the grubby audience because of the glaring lights,” and therefore only “plays” for himself, not the audience.

For Monte’s part, she believes that dancing with her husband has allowed her to approach “a more genuine and deeply felt sensuousness” than other companies “muster,” allowing her to integrate passionately her life with her art.

But the marriage of true minds, apparently hasn’t evolved without its share of woe.

According to Brown, “sometimes I have screamed when yet another one of my (choreographic) ideas gets subsumed under the name ‘Elisa Monte Dance Company.’ ” And, according to Monte, “it’s been pretty rough going at times . . . We’ve had to talk out a lot about who is good at choreographing, who is good at teaching.”

And Monte suggests that she has tried to dissolve distinctions between her deepest inner life and her public persona with the help of Brown’s guidance.

“Call it what you will: sexual, sensual, dancing, being alive. To me it’s just a way to fight the alienation that’s in your blood if you live in this world . . . a way to connect with something greater than just yourself.”