Seattle “danser” Christian Swenson may have a rare and immense case of multiple personality disorder, but it makes for one hell of a show.

Actually, he hasn’t technically been diagnosed as such, but in the performing artist sense, his eclectic and sporadic live improv/dance/theatrical performance is pretty much schizophrenic.

As a solo artist, he combines the confidence and swagger of an actor with the quick wit of an improv artist and the intellect of a zen-like poet with the soul of an avant-garde guitarist — all inside the 6-foot, 5-inch frame of a professionally trained dancer.

And that’s just the bedrock.

The emphatically unconventional song-and-dance man has been described as a the Gene Kelly of another planet, “a one-man animal kingdom,” and “the quintessential vertebrate” in reviews ranging from the New York Times to the Spokane Chronicle. His “dansing” (self-termed with the “s” denoting its atypicality) has been called “genius,” “inspired absurdity,” “astonishing” and consistently one of a kind over the past 20 years.

All along he’s been doing something that no one else has done while aiming to illuminate that which is innate within us all. He calls it “Human Jazz.” He’s bringing it back to Bainbridge Performing Arts this weekend.

“It’s the sheer love of moving … and singing … and acting,” Swenson noted what’s kept him at it for more than two decades. “And to be able to share that largely with younger audiences … to re-introduce people to their bodies in a way, to the delight of simply being human together and the places that can take you.”

THE JOURNEY OF HUMAN JAZZ

Back when he was in high school in the early 1970s Boston area, Swenson sang lead vocals in a Sha Na Na-style greaser band, loving the guitar rock style rhythm and blues of cats like the Allman Brothers and bluegrassers like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

From there, he attended the University of New Hampshire, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in theater in 1977 with ambitions of becoming an actor who portrayed monsters in the movies. So he made his way West.

In a change of direction, he came all the way to Seattle where he worked with the Bill Evans Dance Company in the early 1980s while studying physical improvisation and freelancing other dance gigs for things like the Sea Galley’s crab leg commercials.

During that time, the eclectic monster that would become “Human Jazz” was taking shape.

In his improv dance class, they were studying the interconnectedness of texture, sound and movement when Swenson was reconnected with his proficiency of making sounds with his voice.

“And I realized that there was an artistic medium here to be explored,” he said, noting the discernment of how big a part musical aspects were to his performance art. “It wasn’t musical theater, but it was sort of like modern dance meets Gene Kelly. Then I saw Bobby McFerrin in about 1986 and was just blown away.”

Heavily influenced by the impressively unorthodox polyphonic vocalist famed for not worryin’ and bein’ happy, Swenson said, he started thinking more like a jazz musician, involving guttural scat-style singing into his theatrical improv dance.

“I began seeing what happens when you start playing these two instruments at once,” Swenson said.

And thus the foundations of Human Jazz were set.

THEATER, DANCE, MUSIC AS ONE

The art forms of theater, dance and music have long been explored, Swenson noted, however not so much as a simultaneous act, beyond traditional musical theater and a few other folk idioms.

Human Jazz has attempted to fuse these by “exploring the terrain between speaking and singing, acting and dancing, human and animal, sacred and secular,” he wrote in his bio at www.humanjazz.com.

That exploration has translated into an entrancing and somewhat awkward spectacle of a solo performer who holds down an entire stage while speaking to, singing for and at times creeping out an audience of all ages.

Swenson has performed all over the place from the Lincoln Center in New York to international children’s festivals to “performing at a small sherpa nunnery in the middle of Nepal, having this brilliantly hysterical time with these Buddhist monks,” he said.

There are some shows, like the latter, that are very personally satisfying and others that get the reviews and public notice, Swenson noted. But, looking back over his 20-year career, hey says, the highlights have been the connections he’s made, especially with younger audiences, keeping performance art alive.

“It feels sort of like a mythic journey,” he said. “To meet others who are living in this place as well, somewhat on the edge of just loving what they’re doing and trying to figure it all out.”

Swenson works with those burgeoning types all the time as a professor in drama programs at Seattle University and Bellevue Community College, while a bevy of his most recent performances have been in schools or at children’s festivals.

Here in Bainbridge, he’s been doing the same, working with a select group of high school-aged students from the Bainbridge Dance Center’s Advanced Repertory Group, who will be performing a piece with him during the show April 26. WU