While people unfamiliar with Trolley Dances often expect the dancers to leap down the aisles inside the sleek red cars, they soon realize it's a site-specific program that focuses on discovery. You see, the trolley is merely the transportation, sort of like a moving lobby, and it's when you hop off the trolley that things begin to happen. The dances are not just theatrical entertainment but intriguing studies on hidden away places that you might pass every day.

Presented by Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater, the event is now in its 10th year, and audiences continue to grow. This year's event, which opened on Saturday, is an ambitious production. It is not designed for couch potatoes who loathe even modest exercise, still, it isn't a race. There is some walking, and the program runs about three hours - so plan ahead.

There are six stops along two trolley lines that run through Mission Valley, Old Town and downtown. Five choreographers interpret the landscape, architecture and history of each site, and the site itself becomes an integral part of the experience. Choreographers Terry Wilson and Monica Bill Barnes offer work that is especially potent because it creates characters that draw you into secret lives and desires.

At a bridge that crosses the San Diego River, near the Fashion Valley stop, Wilson presents a powerful narrative on the plight of homeless people who live in obscurity amidst the tangle of river plants. Dancers scoop their arms and raise a body up over their heads. They take turns hopping into a shopping cart. In the end they lean dangerously over the bridge rail, suggesting loneliness and desperation, but also a wild sense of freedom.

Dancers get wet in Monica Bill-Barnes' absurd "Sinking

Again," in the Village at Morena Vista pool. Hugh Cox

In Trolley Dances, you never know what you're going to see, but because you're with a big group, you'll feel comfortable visiting places you've never seen. Only in Trolley Dances will you have the gumption and permission to stroll through an apartment complex to the inner pool area. A short walk away from the Morena Linda Vista Station, your tour group (a small army of perhaps 50-to-100 people) will meet an attractive group of women dressed in black cocktail attire, complete with pearls, on the edge of the pool.

Created by New York-based choreographer Barnes, "Sinking Again" is a super test of waterproof mascara, but foremost, it reminds us that what women really want is love and friendship. It has the women lip sync to Elvis, lose their pumps and slip into the water. Syncopated jerks and slides down the rail are funny, but when Willy Nelson's quivering voice sings of love, the mood shifts. As partners, they help each other stay afloat. They don't care about clothes and makeup anymore. We see them as compassionate beings, and a final image of gentle arms and heads twirling in the water is serene.

At the Machado Stewart Museum in Old Town, choreographer Katie Stevinson-Nollet out of Connecticut plays with our love of the Old West. Dancers kick up lots of dust and recreate familiar clichés from John Wayne to gunfights, cows pokes to dance hall girls. While the dancing is often predictable, it's upbeat and draws on the old adobe's rich history.

"Ode to a Cowboy" by Katie Stevinson-Nollet is a

toe-tappin collection of Western fun such as saloon

gals at the Machado Stewart Museum in Old Town.

Hugh Cox

Eveoke dancer/choreographer Anthony Rodriguez has dancers racing up and down a metal fire escape in Little Italy. Their precarious zigzags has mothers in the audience shouting, "Get down from there!"

Isaacs offers two contrasting pieces. One is an expansive exploration of the Mission Valley Preserve, a magical maze of paths just off the YMCA parking lot. The area is a refuge for delicate birds such as the least Bell's Vireo and native plants. Dancers move slowly, as if in meditation, and balance on bridges and benches. They startle with bursting leaps that send them down trails and deeper into the foilage. The live score played by violinist Kris Apple complements their solitude and also echoes, natural sounds, crunching wood chips and trolley clangs.

Her signature piece, "Rolling Luggage Carts," is a jazzy ensemble of dancers swinging their rolling luggage at the Santa Fe Depot. The convergence of trolleys and trains is a fitting finale for this dance adventure filled with unexpected moments - such as the pigeon that seems to be dancing to a musical beat, and the many passers-by who wonder what it all means. Trolley Dances invites you discover new places and people in your own backyard, and see them in a whole new way. As Isaacs says, "When you take dance out of the theater, wonderful things begin to happen."

Trolley Dances continues Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 4th and 5th. Tours run hourly 10 a.m.-3 p.m. from the Hazard Center Trolley Station.

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Download choreographer biographies