The connections Ronald K. Brown makes—between club dancing and traditional West African forms, a drumbeat and a heartbeat, dancing for pleasure and for God—are surprising and true. They abound in his 1999 breakout hit, Grace, and its companion piece, Serving Nia. Brown choreographed this dyad for the Ailey company, a borough away from his own Bed-Stuy origins and that of his small troupe, Evidence, which he founded as a very precocious and ambitious teenager in 1985. Though Ailey’s late, powerhouse artistic director Judith Jamison immediately recognized his gifts and allowed him a free hand, the uptown monolith wasn’t exactly home turf. The exigencies of a large company meant dances that were not only populous but cooler, smoother, and more impersonal than he’d do for his own troupe. So it’s exciting to see what Evidence will make of Grace and Serving Nia during its annual Joyce outing. With Brown’s own dancers, the West African semaphoring becomes a kind of talking; you want to hear what they have to say. —Apollinaire Scherr