The Music Within

Cleveland native Dianne McIntrye received a hometown hero's welcome during her curtain speech prior to her eponymous dance group thrilling the audience in her latest work, “In the Same Tongue.” Applause washed over the 79-year-old dancer and choreographer, who is best known for her former New York-based Sounds in Motion dance company and for her choreographic work on Broadway and in film, including an Emmy nomination for the 1997 HBO movie Miss Evers’ Boys.

Performance

Dianne McIntyre Group: “In the Same Tongue”

Place

Mimi Ohio Theatre at Playhouse Square, Cleveland, November 15, 2025

Words

Steve Sucato

Brianna Rhodes in “In the Same Tongue.” Photograph by Alison Kay

“In the Same Tongue” was set to an original score by composer Diedre Murray, featuring free and avant-garde jazz, blues, and swing, performed live by a virtuoso quartet. The 80-minute program, visualized in 16 vignettes, was centered around McIntyre’s long-held belief that dance and music speak the same language.

An autobiographical work narrated in voiceovers by McIntyre, “In the Same Tongue,” took us back in time to her early musical and dance experiences, which led her to believe that dance is music moving. They also told of her coming of age in the 1960s during a period of revolution, of her falling in love with the new avant-garde jazz of the time, and of the prejudice she faced at the clubs where she went to experience it. That narration, along with poetry by the late Ntozake Shange, spoken by the work's dancers, added context to the work’s themes of dance, music, spirituality, and the black experience.

Presented by DanceCleveland, the program opened with dancer Brianna Rhodes as a young McIntyre performing a solo in the choreographer’s signature dynamic movement language, blending modern, African, and social dance with improvisation. Rhodes, in silence, engaged in sweeping arm movements as she shifted her body back and forth. She then began reciting lines from Shange’s poem “I live in music,” describing how music lived in her and emanated from her fingertips.

Dianne McIntyre Group in “In the Same Tongue.” Photograph by Alison Kay

The solo was followed by a vignette in which three of the musicians joined the work’s five core dancers center stage, improvising riffs that the dancers spontaneously composed into movement. It was a call-and-response, where each dancer acted as another musician, using their physical instrument to play a complementary tune to what they had heard. It was a delightful exchange.

While many of the work’s early vignettes were upbeat and pertained to social gatherings, including a wedding and a nightclub outing, several of its most memorable vignettes explored more contemplative and difficult subject matter.

In a section entitled “Sacred Sounds/God’s Sunrise,” McIntyre, in a voiceover, told of receiving an audiotape recording from a friend of a ceremony she had attended in Morocco and how that music was elevated like the music she heard in clubs and concerts. “Then I knew this music I was loving was divine,” said McIntyre. “It came from a place of sacredness.” Illustrating her words, the company’s dancers, costumed in long black robes, sculpted the space around them as if executing a dance version of a martial arts kata. They reflected in their movements the sacredness McIntyre spoke of.

Next, flutist Cleave Guyton Jr. accompanied dancer Demetia Hopkins, who performed a measured solo with a ceremonial feel in the vignette, “box & pole,” named after a Shange poem. In it, Hopkins breathily proclaimed as she danced, “We must make totems, how else can the spirits feel us,” and “We must worship ourselves that the earth not be defiled by our neglect.” Her graceful and gestural movements were captivating. So too was the vignette “Silent Duet” that followed.

Dianne McIntyre Group in “In the Same Tongue.” Photograph by Alison Kay

McIntyre’s belief that dance is music in motion. The pair, moving in opposition to one another, engaged in playful movement that had them humorously mimicking and one-upping each other, while eliciting laughter from the audience.

Four local guest dancers also joined the cast for a few sections of the work, most notably the vignette “What, What about?,” in which a group of dancers angrily and disturbingly shouted down another group, repeating the words “What?” and “What about?” at them.

The work’s darkest vignette, “Scream,” addressed slavery and oppression. In it, four of the company’s dancers let out rage-filled screams and dashed about the stage in fear and defiance. Most poignant was a repeated sequence in which the dancers, one by one, sprinted across the stage, only to be pushed back by an invisible force until they were resigned to their plight.

In the end, “In the Same Tongue” proved itself to be an entertaining and thought-provoking work with compelling choreography, superb dancing, and adroit musicianship all speaking as one.

Steve Sucato

Steve Sucato is a former dancer turned arts writer/critic living in Cleveland, Ohio. His writing credits include articles and reviews on dance and the arts for The Plain Dealer, Buffalo News, Erie Times-News, Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance International, and web publications Critical Dance, DanceTabs (London), and Fjord Review. Steve is chairman emeritus of the Dance Critics Association and the creator of the arts website artsair.art.