Evidence/A Dance Company. Where: Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, New York. When: 8 tonight through Saturday; 7:30 p.m. Sunday; 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. How much: $38; $25 Sunday evening. Call (212) 242-0800 or visit joyce.org.

NEW YORK -- Choreographer Ronald K. Brown takes his army of the faithful on a stroll through Pittsburgh in "One Shot," the evening-length premiere that his Evidence/A Dance Company unveiled yesterday at the Joyce Theater.

Dancers of Evidence/A Dance Company perform "One Shot" at the Joyce Theater in New York. Photo: RACHEL PAPO

Rather sedately, like a group of day-trippers who have just emerged from the bus where they were dozing, the dancers tour the historic, African-American neighborhood studied by Pittsburgh's late photo-journalist Charles "Teenie" Harris. A selection of Harris' portraits of ordinary people and celebrities, opening a window onto African-American life roughly from the 1930s to the 1960s, is projected on the backdrop.

Brown was commissioned to choreograph "One Shot" (so named, because Harris famously snapped only one, perfect shot of his subjects) to accompany an exhibition at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture in Pittsburgh. Despite the glory of dancers like Arcell Cabuag, Shani Collins and the others, the photos remain the major attraction on stage, however. Dance lovers would do better to attend an alternating program of mixed works featuring the condensed and more intensely flavored dances "Come Ye," "Truth Don Die" and "Upside Down."

"One Shot" juxtaposes the documentary realism of Harris' photos with sensuous, winding movements that bear a current of spiritual energy without telling a story. Such contrasts can be illuminating. "One Shot" seems choreographically thin, however, resorting too often to a "walk around the block" in which dancers follow a rectangular path of light.

Harris' photos, in this case, are not exactly stills. Meeting the dance halfway, they advance, retreat and scroll, drawing viewers into barrooms and more formal gatherings on church steps, inviting us to imagine the subjects' lives as our own. Brown doesn't return the favor, though, by introducing narrative elements into his dance, and he doesn't borrow poses or arrangements of figures from Harris' subjects. The choreography remains aloof and unsentimental.

The disconnect seems especially stark in a segment titled "Faith and Decadence," couched in the luxurious tones of singer Lena Horne. Romantic coochie-coo is not Brown's style. His independent characters are more likely to unburden themselves in earnest, arm-waving dialogue than they are to embrace. So here they hold hands or place a friendly arm around each other's shoulders. In a climactic moment, the men and women simply line up face-to-face. The scene is dry and prudish. Nothing of Brown's equals the wonderfully sly gesture of the man in a Harris photograph who leans out of his car window to wrap an arm around his girlfriend.

The evening isn't a total loss. Brown has a wonderful knack for layering different kinds of music, so that Billy Strayhorn and Anonimo Consejo may overlap, and drummer Mamadouba Mohammed Camara offers a vivid foil to the recordings. Brown also may layer dances that occur simultaneously in different areas of the stage.

Most intriguing is the segment titled "Free Spirits," a complex interweaving of movement themes. Great poignancy attaches itself to moments when a theme fits several dancers, who adhere in solidarity, while some individuals pursue lonely paths. There's a message here, but it doesn't match the scenery.

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