“Shy younger sister to Worldly Theatre, and reserved elder to flirtatious young Pop-video, Choreography often goes unwritten about as the most discrete of art forms. Yet the performers and creators at Bainbridge Dance Center wield the lingo of their medium as fluently as if dance were its own language.My students are comfortable with the modern idiom, says Susan Thompson, and surprisingly conversant in ballet. She is careful about her use of words, keen to stress that the process that converts the most emotionally raw material into dance is one of abstraction. Taking as an example student Emily Stowell’s rape-inspired work, she says, the dance is subtler than the subject matter sounds. Stowell’s piece is one of three senior compositions choreographed by the eldest students at Bainbridge Dance Center, and features this weekend in the Dance Center’s annual student performance at the Playhouse. More than 200 dance students, ages 4-18, will perform modern, tap and jazz, including a rendition by the Advance Ballet Repertory Dancers and the school’s Ballet III and Ballet IV of a one-act Cinderella Suite.Thompson says that she is also resurrecting a dance with sentimental value. Pushed for time amidst the flurry of a dress rehearsal, and hugging for comfort the red stool where she usually sits to choreograph, she gestures to her program notes in order to clarify this year-old piece called Passage:It illustrates my feelings as I witness our children growing up, gathering the blessings of knowledge, love and friendship into their hearts…even though the path they must travel is finally theirs alone, she writes.She introduces her three eldest students – Lily Dwyer, Liz Lindsley and Emily Stowell, all about to embark on the rites of passage journey to university – as the inspiration for this piece, describing Passage as a gift to them.Then she knocks another metaphor into shape as commandingly as she herds her little duckling youngest dancers onto the stage.Dance is like architecture, she says, you need a sense of space and form, and a concept to build around. And it seems Thompson has imparted her way with words onto her students. As she puts on her headset and sets to work synchronizing on-stage movement with promptly cued music and split-second timed lighting, her senior students discuss the complex issue of accessibility in dance. Your eye becomes so biased, says Stowell. We’ve been dancing so long just to please each other, it’s hard to view our work as an audience would. In practice, however, their work has a depth that speaks for itself. In an age of increasing Bollywood/Hollywood chic, where the aesthetics of Indian dance fashion popular culture as surely as Britney Spears spawns her wannabes, these girls successfully sidestep what Thompson calls the tendency of young dancers to glom onto certain stars with gorgeous bodies. As choreographers and dancers, their concerns go beyond a preoccupation with the flesh.Dance is so subject to multiple interpretations, says Dwyer, it’s like poetry.* * * * *Bainbridge Dance Center students perform at the Playhouse at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. both June 24 and June 22 at the Playhouse. Consult with the box office or the individual performer if you wish to see a particular piece of choreography or dancer, as not all classes are featured in every show. Information/box office: 842-8569.”