I was onstage twice during Thursday's performance of Disavowal (above) at the Florida Dance Festival, and I was also taken backstage by a member of David Dorfman Dance on a little tour before things got under way. Most other people who attended had similar experiences in what David Dorfman calls a "participatory piece,'' designed to "put both audience members and performers on edge,'' the choreographer said in a talkback session.

I have mixed feelings about Dorfman's effort to break down the fourth wall between stage and audience, which is nothing new, going back to '60s groups like the Living Theater and the Open Theater. There was a bit of it recently in American Stage's production of Hair on the St. Petersburg waterfront

A good part of the audience Thursday were faculty and students from the festival, so they had no hesitation trooping onstage, and I didn't detect any serious resistance from anyone else. There was a sprinkling of audience members who chose not to participate, and that was no problem. It was all good-natured fun, but it also tended to distract from the dancing by Dorfman's company, which was often great, and it made for a sprawling woolly monster of a piece. If you like your modern dance in a nice, neat package, it was a turnoff

Coherence was not a strong suit of Disavowal, which is about John Brown, the fiery abolitionist whose raid on Harpers Ferry helped to spark the Civil War. I don't really know any more about Brown now than I did before, except the visceral sense that he was an ornery, difficult guy. He's portrayed in the piece by Dorfman as a kind of crazed bully, at one point reducing dancer Molly Poerstel to inconsolable wailing and weeping. At another point in the evening, dancers Karl Rogers and Raja Kelly went out into the audience and got into an ugly, racially charged argument; Rogers is white, and Kelly, black.

Disavowal had a lot of these sorts of dramatic encounters, often spoken (I imagine it is scripted, though many exchanges, like the one between Rogers and Kelly, felt improvised), and the effect was to make you appreciate the dancing even more. The eight-member company was stunning in a big, almost ballet-like number that was repeated several times to a thudding, percussive wall of sound.

As part of the participatory aspect of the piece, audience members were aligned with individual dancers, who linked us together with yarn (I hope this wasn't meant to suggest slave shackles, though it might have been, alas) in our seats. I was part of a group whose dancer was Jenna Riegel, and she told us a little about herself (she was born in Iowa and a highlight of her career was performing in Edinburgh) and showed us some family photos. All this was pleasant enough, and the result was I tended to watch Riegel more closely than the others. Not only is she a lovely dancer, with a compact body and tomboy athleticism, but I also felt as if I had a personal connection to the performance. 

I found the dancing of Dorfman himself fascinating. A short, barrel-chested man in his 50s, he is the opposite of what you expect in a dancer -- he reminded me of a middleweight boxer, say, a vintage fighter like Gene Fullmer or Carmen Basilio from the 50's and 60s' -- but his low-to-the-ground, oddly twisted, crab-like movement was right for the obsessive character he played.

The festival finale, featuring work developed in workshops over the past 10 days, is at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Theatre II on the USF Tampa campus. The program includes a duet for Dorfman dancers Riegel and Rogers. $6. For information, click here.

Photo: Michael Zirkle