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Ditching Ballet Class to Find a Mentor and a New Way to Move

Arcell Cabuag, left, and Ronald K. Brown rehearsing “Den of Dreams” in Brooklyn.Credit...Rudolf Costin for The New York Times

More than 20 years ago, the dancer Arcell Cabuag peeked into a studio at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and fell in love. It wasn’t romantic love, but a rarer kind — dance love. Without knowing exactly what he was looking at, he had found his choreographer: Ronald K. Brown.

Mr. Brown’s choreography blends modern dance with African traditions, like West African and Afro-Cuban dance, to create a mix both earthy and spiritual. Beginning Feb. 6 at the Joyce Theater, Mr. Brown will pay homage to Mr. Cabuag’s 20th anniversary as a member of his company, Evidence, by creating a new duet featuring the two of them, “Den of Dreams.”

Mr. Cabuag, now 43, was a scholarship student at Ailey from California when he discovered Mr. Brown, 51, at the Ailey studios, then on 61st Street in Manhattan. When he found out that Mr. Brown would be holding auditions for a workshop with advanced students, he was hopeful until he learned that he didn’t qualify to audition.

At that time, Mr. Cabuag was still trying to catch up. He caught the dance bug late, during his senior year of high school in San Jose, and had more experience in jazz and tap than in modern dance. He was trapped in ballet class when Mr. Brown’s audition happened.

“I could hear the music and the stomping on the ceiling,” Mr. Cabuag recalled. “I said, ‘Can I use the restroom please?’ And I took off my ballet shoes, ran up the stairs and snuck in.”

Mr. Cabuag, who is Filipino-American, has been in Mr. Brown’s orbit ever since. In 2004, the same year that Mr. Cabuag won a Bessie, or a New York Dance and Performance Award, he became the group’s associate artistic director. What follows are edited excerpts from a recent conversation with the pair in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where the company is based.

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From left, Ronald K. Brown Brown and Arcell Cabuag in Brooklyn.Credit...Rudolf Costin for The New York Times

What are you trying to get across in “Den of Dreams”?

RONALD K. BROWN I want to celebrate this friendship. He’s been the longest member of the company, and we’ve worked together on everything. Our work relationship has a range. There’s the administrative side. And then to be in the dance studio with this guy — we get to take all of that off. [Laughs] Let’s be artists.

ARCELL CABUAG It’s forcing us to put the email and the phone away and close the laptop. Go in the studio. This is why I’m here.

It’s the moment where I’m following Ron dancing; he’s creating something, and we’re letting that zone happen. This part reminds me of when I first got into the company, looking at his feet and trying to capture it all.

How did Arcell end up in Evidence?

BROWN He would come take class, and one day he said, “Ron, I would like to be an apprentice.” I don’t really believe in apprentices — but he convinced me. I had him understudying a role.

CABUAG There was one day in a rehearsal — they were working on [the 1998 dance] “Upside Down” — and Ron said: “Everybody come over here, and Arcell lay down. We’re just going to pick you up and walk across the studio.” The next week, I was telling the dancer I was understudying that the dancers were going to lift him up when Ron said, “No, Arcell, that’s your part.”

The next day, he said: “Arcell, do you have a passport? Do you want to come to the Ivory Coast with us for a couple of weeks and be in the company?”

Ron, what was it about his dancing that you were so drawn to?

BROWN It had a certain kind of fire. Maybe for the other scholarship students this was their opportunity to be seen and get a job. He was just going for it.

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Mr. Brown says of Mr. Cabuag’s dancing: “We went to Cuba, and I think that opened up his range in a way. He realized, I don’t have to hit everything.”Credit...Rudolf Costin for The New York Times

Have you had many tap dancers in your company?

BROWN No. His relationship to rhythm helps. I don’t really count so much, but if I sing the rhythm of it, he can follow. He hears the rhythm.

CABUAG Even when we’re teaching or working with the Ailey company [where Mr. Brown has choreographed several pieces], I tell dancers: “Watch Ron’s feet first. Get the rhythm in the feet.” Once the feet happen, you can really see what’s going on with the torso. Everything is moving independently. You compartmentalize what’s going on, and then it’s really just the feeling of what he’s doing. I think with Ron’s work, too, is that it just feels good.

What are you thinking about in terms of the new duet?

BROWN Not in a literal way, but it’s almost [Arcell’s] journey to Evidence and discovering this way of moving that he didn’t know about. It’s almost having a dream come true that you didn’t know you had. [Laughs]

How has your relationship to dancing changed as you’ve gotten older?

CABUAG I’m learning how to feel it more. Now I feel a deeper sense of really listening to what Ron is saying. He will tell us stories, but not say, “This connects to this movement right here.” It’s more about, how do we take that story and really listen to it so that it comes through our bodies? As opposed to, “I told you this story about my grandmother, so that means I want you to open your chest.”

There’s a lot of texture in his work, and before I was kind of going for the outside of it. I want to go deeper inside. Especially the Afro-Cuban dancing. I really like moving that way.

BROWN We went to Cuba, and I think that opened up his range in a way. He realized, I don’t have to hit everything. I think he used to have a snap in his dancing. And there’s was always this intense focus that could feel a little angry.

Let the audience come to you a little bit. That is the biggest change.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Ditching Ballet Class for the Action Upstairs. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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