In Philadanco's West Philly studios earlier this week, founder and artistic director Joan Myers Brown talked about the program, and the spring tour.

It was a rewarding month, if grueling, she said, as they paid a price for their popularity. "Our runs were often extended in Germany, and they demanded encores." There were offsetting rewards, however: "When [antigovernment] riots started in Budapest in February, we got a Saturday night off and got the chance to sightsee in that gorgeous city."

For this weekend, Brown programmed old and new. "Between now and our 40th anniversary, I'm committed to bringing back some of the ballets we haven't done lately," she said.

"Talley Beatty created [Such Sweet] Morning Song exclusively for us, and we now have the rights to his works, so I knew I wanted that. We commissioned two world premieres by Christopher Huggins and Hinton Battle." (Any relation to choreographer Robert Battle? "No," Brown said, adding laconically, "Same plantation, maybe.")

Former 'danco dancer Kim Y. Bears reconstructed the 1991 Ritornello, by long-time former resident choreographer Gene Hill Sagan, and at the series-opening performance Thursday night, the athletically smooth-muscled Teneise L. Mitchell was sublime in it, showing near-perfect form in all her lifts and leaps, and accenting the structured Bach music with honeyed flow.

But the 1983 Beatty work, also reconstructed by Bears, was the evening's revelation. To a brassy Charles Mingus score, the company slipped comfortably into Morning Song's bluesy métier, the 11 dancers beautifully conveying its ever-present sense of danger and wariness.

Miguel Edson Banket, Tommie-Waheed Evans, and Brandon Glasgow gave virtuoso performances; Glasgow's exiting arabesque en tournant left an indelible mental image. When the lighting (by Nicole Pierce) tamped down to a more intimate indoor feel, four males tussled with Odara N. Jabali-Nash, whose fierce backward split leap into their arms left no question that she is one of the world's great dancers.

Huggins' From Dawn 'Til Dusk was a short and sweet dance for six women in caramel-colored dresses designed by Kayoko Amemiya - a sharp contrast to Commitments, Battle's explosive finale, with its Vegas-style costumes by Ari G. Harris. This is the first piece for Philadanco by Battle, a three-time Tony winner best known for his work on Broadway, and for the film Idlewild, where he met his Commitments' composer, Scott Steiner.

It's confusing to derive meaning from the men dancing magnificently in long swirling skirts and the women strutting out in stripper-style ostrich fans. But Penelope J. Armstead-Williams so perfectly channels Josephine Baker, and Jabali-Nash dances so exultantly to the wildly percussive beats, that you won't mind a bit.