Lil Buck, Rebirth Brass Band head free outdoor Collage Dance festival Saturday

"The lay person doesn't realize, when they hear the word 'ballet,' how much of an athlete you have to be to be a dancer," said Kevin Thomas, founding artistic director of Memphis' Collage Dance, while discussing the artform to which he has devoted his life.

"It's very physical," Thomas said. "We're athletes. We're athletes, and we're storytellers. Ballet is a form of art that uses the beauty of the human body, the human body in movement, the human body's athleticism, to tell a story, to create a story, to create poetry."

In this regard, Memphis, a city that embraces movement and athleticism, that loves its Tigers and its Grizzlies, its Elvis-pelvis rock and its hip-hop bounce, ought to love its dance, too.

The city will get a chance to experience some of that dance, along with performances by the internationally renowned local "jookin" master Lil Buck and by New Orleans' Grammy-winning Rebirth Brass Band, when Collage Dance hosts its third annual Memphis Dance Festival from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 16, at the dance company's school and headquarters at 505 Tillman at Sam Cooper.

The event is free, and outdoors: the performance stage will be set up in the parking lot of the Collage Dance Center building. Numerous contemporary and classical dance troupes and companies will perform (including groups from New York, San Francisco and Washington), and food trucks and other vendors will be present. "There's something for all the senses," Thomas said. The open-air setting and daytime hours make the festival particularly family-friendly; the music and motion — the energy — should have special appeal for kids.

Thomas and Collage executive director Marcellus Harper founded the company in New York, then moved to Memphis 2007, to bring Collage to a city with a majority BIPOC — black, indigenous, (and) people of color" — population.

"There are still, by far, not that many principle dancers of color," Thomas said. "For this to change, people have to be exposed to it, you have to have representation." Collage attempts to expose people to dance not only through its various classes and community initiatives and events (such as the festival) but through the very basic expedient of the building's large picture windows, which face Sam Cooper and reveal dancers in motion to thousands of passing motorists every day.

A former performer with the Harlem Dance Theatre and Montreal's Les Grands Ballets Canadiens who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, Thomas was one of Lil Buck's teachers when the now famous dancer was a student at New Ballet Ensemble. Like Lil Buck, he views dance as "a form of personal expression" that pays off in numerous ways for its practitioners.

"The discipline it takes, the passion that it takes to do this work, this is a great thing for kids," he said. "You can see the connection in their academic work."

A highlight of the festival will be Collage Dance's performance of "New Second Line," which New York choreographer Camille A. Brown created, using music by the Rebirth Brass Band, in response to Hurricane Katrina. Collage has performed the piece multiple times, but dancing while Rebirth stirs its signature musical roux of jazz, funk and soul live onstage will be a unique experience.

Said Thomas: "This is going to be a memorable and fun event."

For more information, visit collagedance.org.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Lil Buck, Rebirth Brass Band head free outdoor Collage Dance festival Saturday