By RILEY WATTS

Just in case you've been asleep for an extended period, this is the year Juilliard is celebrating its centennial. The 2005-06 season has been packed with exciting and well-publicized events, and the Dance Division's offerings are no exception. The Eliot Feld ramp dance Sir Isaac's Apples, premiered last September, was not the only work especially commissioned for this season; three ballets will receive their world premieres this month under the banner of New Dances/New Music.

Rachel Tess and Daniel Wiley in Adam Hougland's Intarsia, created for Juilliard's February 2003 dance concert. A new work by Hougland will be premiered by Juilliard dancers on this month's New Dances/New Music program. (Photo by Nan Melville)

The concept: Take choreographers Adam Hougland, Jessica Lang, and Alan Hineline, add composers Christopher Rouse, Pete M. Wyer, and Jerome Begin, respectively—and give them just under eight weeks of rehearsal time to create a piece showcasing our second-, third-, and fourth-year dancers. Each dance will be performed with music written through a different form of collaboration (and performed live by the Juilliard Orchestra). The summary: You've got an evening of dance worthy of any New Yorker's attention.

A year and a half ago, Lawrence Rhodes, the Dance Division's director, was approached with an opportunity to co-commission a dance score by composition faculty member Christopher Rouse, which would also be choreographed by Peter Martins, ballet master in chief of the New York City Ballet, for a work to be featured in the company's spring 2006 season. To fulfill Juilliard's end of the commission, Rhodes chose Adam Hougland, a 1999 Juilliard dance alumnus who choreographed Intarsia for the Juilliard Dance Ensemble's spring concert in 2003. Though the City Ballet will have debuted the Martins work before the Juilliard concert (its premiere is scheduled for February 10), Hougland warns the audience not to view the co-commission as a competition, but simply as an opportunity to examine the different choices choreographers can make. "I think Peter [Martins] was also not wanting this to be a choreography contest, and I hope that people won't see it like that," Hougland says. "It's an interesting scenario to see how differently people respond to music." Rouse wrote the score on his own and provided Hougland with MIDI recordings, making Hougland the only one of the three New Dances/New Music choreographers who didn't work directly with the composer. Hougland, a self-described control freak who prefers to choose his music specifically for each dance, viewed this as a welcome challenge: "It's [about] sort of being more flexible, and being ready to work with the tools you've been given at any one time," he explains. Despite not having a direct say in the music, Hougland thrived with the cards he was dealt. The rehearsal process felt "actually pretty low-key," and he describes the level of the current crop of Juilliard dancers as "astounding."

Anthony Smith and Harumi Terayama were among the dancers premiering Jessica Lang's Discoveries Uncovered at Juilliard in December 2002. Lang is creating a new work for the February 2006 concert, again with music by Pete Wyer. (Photo by Nan Melville)

"What's great about working with them is that everybody is so willing to try new things and fall on their faces if that's what's necessary," Hougland says. Audiences will also have a few more opportunities to see his work: a section from the piece will be featured on Live From Lincoln Center on PBS on April 3, when Juilliard's gala celebration will be broadcast on national television, and the Dance Division will be performing it on the Centennial Tour in March in Chicago and Los Angeles, alongside pieces by William Forsythe and Mark Morris.

Choreographer and 1997 alumna Jessica Lang has known composer Pete M. Wyer for three years, and this marks their fourth collaborative piece together. Their working relationship began when Lang was asked to choreograph for the first-year students in Juilliard's first-ever New Dances concert three years ago. For that event, the choreographers worked with a musical score of their choosing, and it was Wyer's music that caught Lang's attention. "I trust his music," explains Lang. "We have similar visions and similar sensitivities." Over the past three years they've honed their collaborative style around the fact that Wyer lives in London and rarely gets to spend time with Lang in person; the majority of their conversation happens via e-mail. It is this trans-Atlantic dynamic that has made their collaborations so unique and successful. The concept for this year's piece had been simmering for more than a year and the distance allowed them plenty of space in which to steep their ideas and dreams for the dance, though the original inspiration has remained constant throughout. "You have to allow yourself time to dream about different endings and different ideas," says Lang, "and ultimately you just choose one and go with it—and hopefully it's the right choice." During one of Wyer's few visits to New York, he'd come to rehearsals and then go with Lang to museums or cafes, where they'd shoot ideas back and forth. The yearlong preparation allowed the pair an opportunity to be ambitious in a way that might have been impossible in most other places—with a cast of 14 dancers, and four opera singers onstage in addition to the orchestra in the pit.

Alan Hineline

Choreographer Alan Hineline and composer Jerome Begin evolved their work through yet another working method: an on-the-spot pairing of music with dance. Hineline and Begin, who met each other in Utah while doing separate projects, have been using opportunities such as this one at Juilliard to make pieces in the most collaborative way possible. Each day of rehearsal, Begin sets up his laptop, keyboard, and recording equipment in the dance studio and puts on his headphones. As Hineline creates movement on the dancers, Begin is busy watching and also listening to what his fingers are creating on the keyboard on his headphones, which is also being recorded onto his laptop. It's the ultimate give-and-take; Begin's music is always present in the rehearsal process because he is influenced directly by what he sees in the dancers. "It's not just like I'm writing a piece of music and he's making a dance piece, but we're both making something else," says Begin. "It ties the music and the choreography together in a much stronger way." Their method of close contact works successfully not only because they have similar approaches to the work, but also because they are friends. It takes very particular personalities to be able to mesh in the heat of the creative environment. "We really trust each other's opinions, so it's not a big deal for one of us to say, 'This part doesn't work,'" says Begin. "It's really a luxury to have someone you can bounce ideas off of."

New Dances/New Music Peter Jay Sharp Theater Wednesday-Sunday, Feb. 22-26 For time and ticket information, please see the calendar.

The good fortune the Juilliard dancers have to learn and perform in such a creative environment was summed up best by Lawrence Rhodes when he said, "Only at Juilliard can you do this."

Riley Watts is a third-year dance student.