Mostly Mozart reprises Trisha Brown's Winterreise.

Trisha Brown's Winterreise, Tues. & Thurs., July 29 & 31, Sat., August 2, at John Jay College Theater, 899 10th Ave. (betw. 58th & 59th Sts.), 212-721-6500.

When it comes to dance, I subscribe to the theory that choreographers are better off collaborating with their contemporaries in music. And in general, choreographers and dance audiences tend to show greater support for new music than the rest of society?even more than the classical music community. Merce Cunningham, whose repertoire consists of dozens of new compositions, described this sentiment well, saying once that he preferred "music that may tell me something about the time I live in that I didn't know about before." Of course, his close working and personal relationship with John Cage helped to develop his thoughts about music.

Cage believed that music and choreography should exist independently from one another, that when paired too closely together one inevitably dominated the other?another part of his rather successful attempts to emancipate sound from the bounds of 19th-century harmony and emotional attachments. While the dance highlight of last summer in New York was definitely the 50th Anniversary Festival of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Lincoln Center (which featured a great deal of music from Cage and other New York School composers), this summer's most exciting dance offerings come from the Mostly Mozart Festival. From the title, one can infer that the music on display will hardly be modern, but Trisha Brown's Winterreise, a new interpretation of Franz Schubert's agonizing 24-part song cycle, demonstrates that older forms also have a place in contemporary dance; the artistic possibilities have not been exhausted, and there is plenty to be mined from the past masters.

Brown, who was awarded the National Medal of Art earlier this year, blew audiences away in December when Winterreise premiered in New York. The company is now in the midst of touring the work around the world, with a stop at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam preceding the reprise here in New York, and the London premiere at the Barbican Centre in September. In this piece, Brown seems to contradict Cage in that neither the music nor the dance outshines the other. In fact, they seem to feed off of one another. Add the poetry of Wilhelm Müller, a contemporary of Schubert, to the mix, and you have a picture-perfect collaboration that travels through time.

Müller's set of poems tells the story of a man, rejected by his lover, who sets out on a cold, harsh journey of questioning and self-discovery, trying to overcome the throbbing of unrequited love with a masculine mix of denial and courage. Schubert's musical setting for baritone and piano is wickedly romantic, some of his richest expression indicating a strong psychological connection between the composer and the hero of the poems. With both the poet and composer leading lush lives and being quite susceptible to the tides of love, it should come as no surprise that both died "romantically" at a young age: Müller, age 32 of a heart attack; Schubert, age 31, from syphilis.

While Winterreise is universally lauded as an unsurpassable work in the realm of song literature, Brown's production takes it to an even more divine level. British baritone Simon Keenlyside, held up by the subtle underpinnings of pianist Pedja Muzijevic (both making their Mostly Mozart debuts), not only delivers a stunning performance, but his voice rings out while hanging headfirst, while being carried by the dancers, and having a foot planted in his chest. He is thrust into the midst of the dance, becoming the focal point as the dancers play the other leading role: nature. Representing trees, birds, the sun and a dozen other elements from the poems, the dancers' interpretation of the winter journey is deepened by Jennifer Tipton's elegant lighting design. Like the music and the poetry, Brown is able to tap into the eloquent desperation handed down to her from two Romantic gentlemen.