CityDance Ensemble performs Sophie Maslow’s 1942 piece “Folksay” on Friday.

With long horizontal strides, wide smiles that reached the upper tier of Strathmore’s grand 2,000-seat concert hall, and arms fully outstretched at an angle to either side, the CityDance Ensemble began The Songwriters, the final performance of their 2007-2008 season. Farmer boys were clad in jeans and flannel shirts; farmers’ daughters sported flowing frocks. Moving briskly in rows from stage right to stage left, they resembled the moving targets of one of those amusement park midway games in their passing uniformity.

The first of five distinct sets on Friday evening that each paid tribute to some of America’s greatest songwriters, the staging of Sophie Maslow’s 1942 piece “Folksay” was one part dustbowl hoedown, one part Oklahoma!, and one part West Side Story, all set to the music of Woody Guthrie. The narration for a scene featuring two fellas fightin’ could have been the Jets and Sharks trading barbs: “This corner is mine, see.” A series of zingers from an older era peppers the cool interaction of skirt chasing being acted out on stage. The dancing tells the story of the songs. The dancers are all “dodgers” and lose their true lovers. When guitarists John Ratliff and Ryan Walker close with “Ride Around Little Doggies”, the dancers gracefully simulate a ride on horseback or steering of a dog sled with a tug on the reigns.