When Reggie Wilson's company performs at Paliku Theatre Sunday, the house is sure to rock.

Bearing the impressive title "The Tale: Npinpee Nckutchie and the Tail of the Golden Dek," the program's evening-long work is an exploration of intimacy, love and devotion using different forms and covering various historic time periods. The piece premiered in New York in 2006 and has been touring across the country for the past year.

The Brooklyn-based company, founded in 1989, is the creation of Reggie Wilson. A native of Milwaukee, Wilson began dancing at home in the family living room. "It was something we always did," he said recently by phone from his Los Angeles hotel room.

The eloquent and thoughtful choreographer ascribes the beginning of his serious interest in dance to an experience he had in middle school.

"Our choir teacher also taught at the high school. She thought I had some talent for dance and invited me to be the assistant choreographer for the high-school musical." Working on that production gave Wilson a sense of the art of choreography and a taste for theater. Wilson later attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he studied dance and anthropology, receiving a bachelor of fine arts in dance.

During those formative years in New York, Wilson observed the work of other black choreographers such as Bebe Miller, Ralph Lemon and Bill T. Jones. All were struggling with the problem of combining post-modern dance with their African heritage. Like them, Wilson began to find ways to make his material culturally specific.

The name of his company derives from fist-and-heel worship, which occurred when African slaves were denied the use of the drum. Wilson says "The Tale" "... draws upon the African-American culture to articulate the loves, losses and beliefs of black folks."

The piece incorporates stepping, stomping, shouting and strutting, and incorporates traditions ranging from early fist-and-heel styles to step dances that developed into urban dance sensations like the Lindy Hop and Electric Slide. Wilson's work is based on research and observation of the cultures of the American South, many African countries and the islands of Trinidad and Tobago.

He hopes his work will "... evoke memory and have resonance of the past, which is with us constantly."

Asked what he hopes audiences will see in his work, Wilson declares, "I don't know what I want them to look for. There's no way I can determine what they're going to see. I want them to come and have a good time."

Judging from the response his work has had among leading dance critics, and the numerous awards and honors Wilson has received, that won't be hard to do.