By ANNA KISSELGOFF

On the eve of Sept. 11, 2001, the annual Evening Stars and Music Dance Festival was under way as usual as a free outdoor series on the World Trade Center Plaza at the foot of the center's towers.

Determined to carry on after the Sept. 11 attacks, Liz Thompson, executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, moved the performances last year to two nearby sites. The visiting Noh Drama Theater of Japan appeared at Pace University, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Battery Park.

The East meets West theme was a subtext again on Friday night when the fifth annual festival opened at Battery Park with the Chinese Folk Dance Company from New York, the South African choreographer and dancer Vincent Mantsoe and the Parsons Dance Company with the Ahn Trio, an American group of Korean-born classical musicians.

This year the series has been mainly a weekend event at Battery Park, although there are two more entries: Elizabeth Streb (tonight) and Twyla Tharp (tomorrow), both at 8 p.m.

The Chinese Folk Dance Company does more than good work. Founded in New York's Chinatown (Xiaoling Yang, artistic director; Amy Chin, executive director) in 1973, it sends performers and teachers throughout the country. Although folk dance is in its title, it has a strong focus on the classical dance and Chinese opera traditions.

Nonetheless Xiaoling Yang's choreography for ''Strength in Brotherhood,'' a male ensemble work, showed how contemporary choreography can absorb traditional acrobatics and martial arts. In ''Silk Clouds,'' choreographed by Shan Wang, seven women exquisitely described cursive patterns in the air with their long sleeves, and with amazing skill retracted the sleeves smoothly into ruffles on their arms. ''Peking Opera Colors,'' choreographed by Ge Bai, provided persuasive cameos by Chinese Opera characters.

Mr. Mantsoe has been seen in recent years in the United States as a solo performer. Here he moved through slinky pliés and sudden turns into a complex dance that expanded with both emotional and physical power into a character study. Since ''Phokwane,'' this solo, combines the traditional names of Mr. Mantsoe's parents, the dance could be seen as a storytelling abstraction. Elements of African dance were abstracted into a mesmerizing personal style: parts of the body were isolated but immediately joined with great fluidity.

Using music that Kenji Bunch composed for Angella Ahn (violin), Maria Ahn (cello) and Lucia Ahn (piano), David Parsons set his always polished dancers into perpetual motion. In ''Swing Shift'' Mia McSwain stood out as the first and last woman onstage when three couples and an odd woman out spun into duets and ensemble. The piece was too long, although the Ahn Trio's vibrant approach to the jazzy music and its intensity made the Parsons dances a class act. Mr. Parsons's fine ''Slow Dance'' for three couples has a dark romantic edge. It is full of echoing lifts and choppy arms: it grows in intensity and only seems to subside.

Source: NY Times