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It was the 1970s, and Dianne McIntyre was a dancer on a mission: to soak up live music, specifically, she said, \u201cso-called avant-garde jazz,\u201d free jazz or, when labels really start to irritate her, just \u201cwhatever.\u201d<\/em> Shows would end late, making this obsession a sunrise pursuit. \u201cWe\u2019d leave at 2 a.m., get on the subway from Brooklyn or down in the Village,\u201d she said in a video interview. \u201cAt 2 a.m., the subways came by very seldom, so we\u2019d get home at 4 a.m., something like that. But we didn\u2019t care. We had to go. We had to go hear the music.\u201d<\/p>\n To McIntyre, now 77, dance and music are one entity, an artistic union that she celebrated with Sounds in Motion, the company she formed in 1972. Starting Friday, that vision will be on display in her new work, \u201cIn the Same Tongue,\u201d the inaugural dance performance to grace the new Apollo Stages at the Victoria Theater<\/a>.<\/p>\n Filtered through the lens of Black culture, \u201cIn the Same Tongue\u201d is a personal work, years in the making. McIntyre, a veteran choreographer, is fueled by questions: How do dance and music speak to one another? Are they \u2014 and are people \u2014 speaking in the same key? As she said, \u201cIt\u2019s dance-music communication and human communication.\u201d<\/p>\n McIntyre moved to New York from Cleveland in 1970 and studied with Viola Farber<\/a> and Gus Solomons Jr<\/a>., both influential dancers from the Merce Cunningham company. McIntyre\u2019s deep connection to dance and music led her to form Sounds in Motion, a company \u2014 and studio \u2014 in Harlem dedicated to dance, of course, but also ideas about Black expression. It was a rich melding of the arts; the poet Ntozake Shange danced in her company and was part of her circle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIn the Same Tongue\u201d \u2014 a nuanced weaving together of motion and sound, both improvised and set \u2014 features musicians, dancers, poetry by Shange<\/a> and text by McIntyre. When she first started working on the dance, years ago, she got stuck. A former dancer gave her valuable advice: to write about her associations with music. \u201cI didn\u2019t write so much about the individuals I worked with,\u201d she said, \u201cbut how it was my intention for people to see the music in the dance.\u201d<\/p>\n McIntyre brought on Diedre Murray<\/a> as composer. Murray started out as a cellist. \u201cShe was one of the pioneers bringing a string instrument into the jazz world,\u201d McIntyre said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While this is their first official collaboration, they have worked together before, including performing a duet in the 1980s. That experience was \u201ckind of breathtaking,\u201d Murray said. \u201cBut my mother and aunt were dancers\u201d \u2014 her mother with the Nicholas Brothers and her aunt had a dance company \u2014 \u201cso I started by improvising for movement. Actually, that\u2019s how I started my career as a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon after Murray first picked up a cello, at about 11, her aunt recruited her for a performance. Her aunt told her: \u201c\u2018You see the movement. Make sounds behind it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She\u2019s still at it. For \u201cIn the Same Tongue,\u201d Murray explores a variety of music styles. \u201cBuddy Bolden and some earlier music like that,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s some straight ahead bebop in it. There\u2019s some totally free music. There\u2019s some avant-garde music in it, for lack of a better word. The music and dance work together in terms of storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n