The music starts, a brisk, playful violin piece, and the lights come up -- but the stage stays dark.

We swivel in our seats to find a petite brunette performer, spinning and reaching on a little balcony behind us. The dancer (Denise Posnak) finishes a series of abrupt, controlled movements and the lights go down again, only to come up on Sarah Mitchell barreling up and down the stairs.

"Causeway," a dual premiere of performances by Kate Corby & Dancers and Chris Walker's NuMoRune Collaborative, is full of such pleasant surprises. With intense solo performances by Corby and Walker -- both new assistant professors in the UW Dance Program -- the nine dances in "Causeway" are punctuated by big hair, naked torsos, and tortured screams (one silent, one startlingly audible).

Walker and Corby team up on the opening work, "Right of Way Management," choreographed by Carrie Hanson of the Seldoms, a dance company in Chicago. Walker, standing well over six feet tall with a good three feet of dreadlocks, dwarfs Corby, making their unison movement especially compelling.

With alternating starts and stops and gestures that restrict and free, the work embodies intimate conflict. Corby and Walker grasp each other at the waist, taking large angular steps together. It's like watching two people negotiate a romantic (or possibly professional) relationship.

After Corby's aptly named "Capriciously Yours," described above, Walker takes the stage for the first of three solo performances.

"In Honour of Locks and Keys and Coupons to My Heart" by Neila Ebanks lands him center stage, clad only in a sheer white skirt like a bridal veil. Walker is by turns fierce and tentative, fighting and flailing, then curling his body to look like an elderly man. (It is here we see the first scream, a haunting image of the skull behind the sheer fabric -- truly scary.)

In "Mi Kumba Tete," a premiere choreographed by Honore Van Ommeren, Walker wraps that epic hair atop his head for an androgynous look. Using a stool as a prop, Walker enacts a journey marked by crisis, moving from a "thinker" pose to vigorous jumps and rotations. It's a play of contrasts. Walker pulls himself forward by his arms on the ground, then spirals back to the stool in a burst of energy.

Walker favors new age music, which by the third solo piece becomes tiresome. Still, the atmospheric qualities of music with no discernible melody or rhythm work best on "Reflections," a 2005 piece for Walker by Arnsenio Andrade-Calderon.

"Reflections" revels in the life cycle of the jungle, casting Walker as a sea anemone, a bird and a big cat. He undulates like a snake, then whips his hair around -- it's melodramatic, but it works. Claude Heintz deserves a nod for all of the lighting, but especially in this piece, where he uses bold reds and yellows to accent the movement.

Of Corby's pieces, the most enjoyable are "Always in April," a 2009 work for two dancers, and her violent solo piece "Yoke," from 2007. The latter she performs topless in a hoop skirt, with white face and wild, blown-out hair. (Here is the second scream. It's frightening, too.)

Emily Miller and Anna Norman buzz around the stage, busy as bees, in "April." Flexible and expressive, the dancers capture well the animalistic and twisted movements Corby favors. At least one fall is unnervingly hard, but the repetition and unison movements work nicely. That's also true for an earlier Corby collaborative piece, "Go."

The capper of "Causeway" is "Spin," a dance of disparate paths created by Walker and Guy Thorne, a Guyanese choreographer. It's the largest piece cast-wise, featuring the athletic, frenetic work of Nani Agbeli, N'Jelle Gage, James Gavins, Thorne and Walker.

"Spin" is arguably the most unusual piece of the night. It's set to poetry by Dominique Chestand, who speaks of language and borders. It then bleeds into club music and African drumming, sometimes fighting within itself for audio dominance. The dance, too, reflects that chaos.

All told, it's a dark evening in the theater, and at two hours, it feels quite long. But "Causeway" hangs together well for a concert with seven choreographers, not counting the dancers who contributed to several of the works.

And of course, it's a treat to see new dancers and five premieres, all of which foreshadow fine things from the two new professors.

IF YOU GO

The UW Dance Department presents "Causeway," with choreography by Kate Corby and Chris Walker, twice more at the Margaret H'Doubler Performance Space in Lathrop Hall, 1050 University Ave. The program includes Kate Corby & Dancers and Chris Walker's NuMoRune Collaborative.

Show times are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Oct. 2-3. Tickets cost $15 for the general public and $10 for students and seniors. The performance includes partial nudity. Running time is just under two hours with one ten minute intermission.

Visit dance.wisc.edu for more information or call 265-2787 to buy tickets.

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