Global Beats

Billed as Russia's largest ethnic dance festival to date, the "Dances" festival will celebrate dance music from around the world Saturday as groups from opposite sides of the globe converge on a pair of bandstands in the Hermitage Garden. Audiences can groove to a potpourri of musical styles from Africa, America, India, the British Isles and Russia around 12 different stages throughout the park.

One of the show's headliners is Orchestra Baobab, the Senegalese band that first brought its trademark fusion of Cuban rhythms and African sounds to a Dakar nightclub in 1970. The "orchestra" was initially formed to liven up Baobab, a nightspot once frequented by the upper echelons of the country's elite and their foreign guests, and named in honor of the African savannah's emblematic and majestic tree.

"Orchestra Baobab is from everywhere and from nowhere," wrote guitarist Barthelemy Atisso in a press release. "Since the [Baobab] club saw an international clientele, the owners wanted to hear tango, jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, pop, rumba and soul. So, playing everything, we created our own style." That style earned them a level of popularity unprecedented in Senegal over the next two decades before the ensemble gradually spun apart -- only to regroup in 2001 and begin touring internationally.

If Baobab is a flashback to 1970s Senegal, then Royal Crown Revue, the United States' self-proclaimed "founding fathers of Neo-Swing," also take their retro heritage seriously. The ensemble harks back to the big-band era by playing vintage instruments and sporting clothes such as slick double-breasted suits, fedoras and hand-painted 1940s-style ties.

The band -- which first grabbed the public eye with a flashy cameo in Jim Carrey's 1994 film "The Mask" -- ought to play enough jazz, jump and everything from be-bop to gut-bucket blues to keep the audience jiving through its hour-long slot.

Opening the festival is Corey Ledet & His Zydeco Band, which is set to import a taste of spicy Creole music from the marshy bayous of southwest Louisiana. It was there that the fast-paced Zydeco style emerged in the early 20th century. A cheerful synthesis of Cajun and African musical traditions, the genre puts an emphasis on virtuosic accordion and washboard solos. The word "zydeco" is said to come from "les haricots," the French term for beans -- and possibly from the phrase "les haricots sont pas sales" (the beans aren't salted), common in Creole songs as a metaphor for hard times.

Next on the lineup, Strings features a repertoire of bhangra and hit pop songs from India's Bollywood films, brought to Moscow via London, the group's current abode. In a bonus unique to the band's performance, a special troupe of sari-clad dancers will take the stage and lead the audience in traditional Indian dances.

Straight from the Irish enclaves of London, the six-piece band Neck will superimpose the traditional Irish fiddle, whistle, banjo and Irish bagpipes of the Emerald Isle onto a punk-rock rhythm section of electric guitar, bass and drums. Guitarist and songwriter Leeson O'Keeffe completes the band's mix with bellowing vocals.

Approximately halfway through the program, the headline groups will take a breather, ceding the audience's attention to the 10 mini-stages around the garden. There, domestic groups will mingle rock and roll with baroque minuets, Cuban music with break-dancing, and belly-dancing with Russian folk music to finish off an unusually multicultural evening in Moscow.

"Dances" takes place Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m. in the Hermitage Garden, located at 3 Karetny Ryad. Metro Pushkinskaya, Mayakovskaya. For more information, see www.tantsy.ru. For tickets, call 263-4677.