EAST (COAST) MEETS WEST (COAST).

Eiko & Koma Meld Styles with Anna Halprin

A REVOLVING PORTABLE CAVE with stringy stalactites is lit from below as though from bubbling lava. The dancers Eiko and Koma fade into view, each in a separate hollow of this dreamlike environment. They are survivors, victims of a natural or unnatural disaster. Wearing a swath of rag or maybe nothing, ashen faced, bereft, their genders can barely be discerned from a distance. Existentially alone in this fire-and-ice, end-of-the-world scenario, they inch toward each other. The audience waits, with schooled patience, for the next small thing to happen. Depending on your inner resources, the wait can seem like mere forbearance, or it can be an opportunity to meditate on life and death, living and dying. Eons later, they finally make contact, skin touching skin. Without changing their demeanor, they suddenly seem ecstatic. Their relationship turns romantic, erotic. They seem to be in pre- or post-lovemaking embrace, damn the world outside. During the hourlong When Nights Were Dark (2000), audience members undergo the most extreme emotions while watching the most minimal action. Welcome to the mystery of Eiko & Koma, masters of their unique form of dance. [] Into this mystery steps another mystery: the phenomenon that is Anna Halprin. At the age of 81, Halprin joins Eiko & Koma in a world premiere, Be With, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts October 16 to 18.

Halprin, widely acknowledged as a visionary in dance, community ritual, and the healing arts (see "HALPRIN'S EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY AT TAMALPA INSTITUTE"), has been helping plan this collaboration, entitled Be With because of its merging of generations and styles, for the past year. The fourth collaborator is experimental composer/cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, formerly of the Kronos Quartet.

In their apartment in Manhattan Plaza, a midtown housing complex mostly for artists, Eiko and Koma spoke about the development of their work. They met in Japan in a workshop given by Tatsumi Hijikata, founder of the Japanese contemporary form butoh, which means "dance of darkness." Each time Koma named a dancer they studied with--Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno, Manja Chmiel (a disciple of Mary Wigman), and Lucas Hoving--Eiko chirped, "Very briefly, very briefly." They wanted only to taste, not to submit to, a master. They claim they were ready to quit dance, but Hoving told them, "You can stop any time. But before you do, go see New York." They arrived in the United States in 1976. Within a few years, they earned a name for themselves as two of the most riveting postmodern, post-Hiroshima performers and image-makers, For their stark, sometimes hypnotic works, they've won numerous commissions and awards, including a MacArthur "genius award" in 1996. Gus Solomons jr, writing in Dance Magazine (see Reviews, March 1994, page 98), pronounced their performance of Wind (1993) "sacred," "life-affirming," and "sublime."

Halprin first saw Eiko and Koma dance in San Francisco in 1977. A mutual friend, the choreographer Kei Takei, had urged them to meet. Halprin was so struck with their artistry that she went backstage and gave them the key to her studio on Divisadero Street. "You can come any time," she told them. Since then she has seen many of Eiko & Koma's thirty-some works, has kept up an email relationship with them, and sends them videos of her work. The Japanese-born couple regard her as a friend and mentor, and more--as part of the family. She is pen-pal to their two teenage sons (who performed in Wind), and keeps photos of the boys next to her computer.

Last year Eiko and Koma flew to San Francisco to see Halprin's eightieth-year retrospective (see Presstime News, Dance Magazine, June 2000, page 34). During her talking solo, Memories from My Closet, she says the line, "And now that I am 80, I am just beginning to understand the plants and animals, the ocean, the creepy-crawlies, the stars and the moon." Koma immediately felt the connection to their work, which strives for the elemental, the most basic unit of life.

As Eiko says, "We always have the notion of dancing like plants and animals, because part of our desire to dance is to free from what is being human. We never wanted to express..." Koma finishes her thought, "... human emotions." He continues, "We are same: plants, animals, mountains. We are same." Adds Eiko, "The image I often use with my students is an amoeba. It's not about studying the outside look of it, but to allow yourself to say, `I'm related.'"

THE IDEA FOR THE collaboration was ignited by Charles and Stephanie Reinhart, who have commissioned fifteen works by Eiko and Koma and had presented Halprin with the 1996 Samuel Scripps Award at the American Dance Festival, which they co-direct. The Reinharts, also the artistic directors for dance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, posed the question to the creating couple: "How about dreaming of something that you would like to do above and beyond what you've already been doing? In terms of outside influences, working with someone else, what would attract you; what would entice you?" The answer was working with Halprin. Charles Reinhart's immediate reaction, he recalled recently, was, "This rings the bell! It couldn't be better!" He knew how much both parties respect each other, and he sensed the possibility for an exciting collaboration. "I always feel that somehow when I'm watching Eiko and Koma that I'm going back to my prehistoric roots. With Anna, I am very much in my present roots. So this combination, these `rooting togethers' are going to bring up something--who knows?"

But Halprin resisted. She was daunted by the coast-to-coast distance, the difference in ages, the difference in cultures, and the pressure to produce on cue. She is more comfortable creating in relative isolation, deciding when the time is right to perform. Recalling her reaction to Eiko and Koma's proposal, she said, "It all seemed out of the question. At my age, I am never sure about committing myself to anything over time." But she was attracted by their differences. Halprin, who has often worked with people of other cultures, said, "I like the idea of being shaken out of my old habitual ways."

In entering into this collaboration, Halprin asked for a "crash course" in how Eiko and Koma work. Koma described this preparation: "We have sleeping dance, dreaming dance, resting dance." Although Halprin passed with flying colors, she felt intimidated by the bond between the married couple in the studio. Even later in the process, during a five-day work period, she confessed, "I haven't yet found the way to dance when the two of them are dancing. It's like a closed circuit. They're so familiar with each other." But, she said with enthusiasm, "The working process is illuminating, challenging, and generous. We are stretching each other. We are working morning, afternoon, and evening. We' re so busy working that I've just burned my food!"

The four collaborating artists have been sharing their life stories, but when it comes to rehearsals, they start with movement. Says Halprin, "We tried to follow the movement language, and let that evoke emotion and images." About the final piece she said, "Whatever we come up with is going to be something that I would never do if I were on my own and they would not do on their own. We are always asking each other, `Why are you doing that; why are you doing it this way?' There is constant negotiation."

Eiko and Koma, like Halprin and other artists who explore the extremes of theatrical presentation, have their share of detractors. As Eiko relates, wherever they perform, "Some people love it; some people hate it." Occasionally at post-performance talks, someone accuses them of not doing real dance. I ask Eiko how they convince people that what they do qualifies as dance. She answers, "We don't. We just change our words and say, `This is art.'"

When asked why they often appear nude, Eiko counters, "A fish in water isn't wearing anything." The environments they dance in are as close to their skin as clothing. They performed River (1995) in creeks and rivers across the country and in Japan. When they brought it to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1997, they performed in a large, shallow pool of water, sometimes entangled in protruding tree branches. For When Nights Were Dark, they hand-painted more than 5,000 strips of cheesecloth, cut them, and hot-glued them onto the net hammock, which they then wove into a structure of lumber and driftwood. Working with several assistants, it took them a year to complete.

Likewise, participants in their "delicious movement" workshops may take a long time to find the deep pleasure in it. Even with the encouragement to enjoy the "juiciness" of the movement, many students find it difficult to move the limbs ultra-slowly without shaking. Eiko says, "Young dancers may have to wait until they get sick and slow down. They may have to wait until they get pregnant, or have some disappointment. I say, `You don't have to get it today; you have the rest of your life to get it.'"

KOMA ADDS THAT IT is really about lifelong pleasure. "When we die, the body stops moving," he says. "But until that moment, the body loves movement."

Their involvement in the creative process is constant. Eiko says, "We talk about the piece twenty-five hours. It's terrible. One is asleep and the other is up, and then you wake up and talk about it." I ask if they agree on everything. "After fighting," she quips. "But, bottom line, our aesthetics are pretty close." When I ask what they do after a performance, she answers, "We do laundry; it piles up."

Although the age difference is part of the "score," or general plan of Be With, Eiko realized that she does not have to treat Halprin as delicately as she feared. Her father died recently at age 79. "My body can't help remembering my own parents," she said. "But Anna is not weak. I swear she will live another twenty-five years." Fresh from a work session, she wrote: "Anna's willingness is amazing; Koma and I feel challenged and inspired. Even when the communication gets a little tough, or nerve-wracking, I adore her. She is genuinely beautiful and vivid."

But folding Halprin into their partnership will take some work. Eiko and Koma perform like two bodies with one state of mind. Says Eiko, "Sometimes I don't even have to look at Koma. I just feel how the audience starts to look at Koma, and then I don't compete. I just become more of the element." This kind of subtle sensing between dancers takes years to develop. Early in the rehearsal period, Eiko confided, "With Anna, we are not yet all tuned in. Our kinetic sense is not tuned in, but our wishing sense is. Sometimes we can talk about it. Sometimes we can't talk about it; we just have to do it."

Halprin has not danced "for" another choreographer since the early 1940s, when she appeared in a musical choreographed by Charles Weidman. So her new partners have taken care to make her feel artistically at home. For the set design, they will create a wall similar to the one in her Mountain Home Studio in Kentfield. And one of her favorite CDs--the Paul Winter Consort featuring an Armenian singer--is being used by Jeanrenaud as a point of departure for one musical section.

Last spring, during a break from a work period, Halprin said, "We have a lot of differences. The age difference: Physically, I'm not able to do what they do--not by a long shot. Pacing: They are slow and I tend to be frenetic. Cultural differences: Asian and Jewish are miles apart. And yet what's beautiful is to get to the bottom line and find our commonalities."

HALPRIN'S EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY AT TAMALPA INSTITUTE

BY HEIDI LANDGRAF

The moment I set foot in Anna Halprin's Mountain Home Studio in Kentfield. California, I felt a tremendous peace descend upon me. I knew I was home. Never mind that Trisha Brown. Meredith Monk, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti and countless other artists had danced in the same space--it wasn't about prestige, it was about healing. Though Halprin is a seminal figure in the world of modern dance, her work has also centered around healing for many years now, and the power of her presence was palpable in the heated wooden floor, in the cantaloupe-colored walls, and amongst the mossy trees on the mountainside.

I had come to the Mountain Home Studio for the first time to take a weekend workshop called "Dance/Art Process" after meeting Halprin at the California Institute of the Arts in 1998 while I was pursuing my MFA there. As a guest teacher she was frank and open about her spirituality, and asked us to make a collective prayer for a student who had died of AIDS while studying with her. We sent it up into the rafters of the theater with a large exhale and a release of hands. I had never seen someone use ritual as openly as she did, so matter of factly. I have since heard her called a "dance shaman," practicing a "mystic body religion." I agree, and yet she is not so mysterious. She is forthright with her work and makes it accessible to all.

Halprin's journey into healing began when, as she describes in her book Dance as a Healing Art, she identified a cancerous growth in her body by drawing it. She was treated conventionally, but later took matters into her own hands and says that she healed herself through drawing and dancing it out. Nearly thirty years later, she is cancer free.

This experiential approach to healing contributed to the genesis of the Tamalpa Institute, which Halprin co-founded with her daughter, Daria, in 1978. The Institute, developed and directed by Daria, offers training and certification in Expressive Arts Therapy. The body of work, which had been generated by the long-running San Francisco Dancers' Workshop, has been articulated and codified into a structured and repeatable system that is used for personal growth and change. Expressive Arts Therapy merges creative expression with an individual's life experiences, bringing art and life together in a conscious way. The work consists of three major components: identification and enactment of life themes; release of and dis-identification with those themes; and the creation of change around the material. This is done through "the interplay between visualized images, their expression in graphic symbols, and their spontaneous enactment in movement and dance" (from Coming Alive, The Creative Expression Method, a manual written by Daria Halprin, which has been revised and retitled and is available through the Tamalpa Institute).

"Dancing your heart out ... can be incredibly therapeutic, but is not necessarily therapy," Daria Halprin explains. "Answering questions directly related to the experience itself takes the step from therapeutic to therapy, and from a profound experience into a learning experience." The work encourages creativity and enables dancers to better use movement as an intrinsic language of the body--both on themselves as dancers and in working more authentically with others as a choreographer. Halprin thinks that dance therapists could also benefit from this training because the use of the intermodal arts (i.e. drawing, creative writing, role-playing) expands their capabilities. "[The expressive arts field] is also about the use of ritual, working with communities, and can be used as an approach to performance art," says Halprin. There are as many ways to apply the training as there are people studying it, and the need for this work in our society has never been greater.

Tamalpa Institute training is similar to the weekend workshops taught by Halprin, but goes deeper and is more intense. "The program works well because of its experiential approach," says Marguerite Etemad, a graduate of Tamalpa. Though Daria Halprin introduces theories of such movement theorists as Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais, Carl Rogers, and Fritz Perls during the two-year training program, the process also requires the deep exploration of the self.

Working practitioners of the Halprin Life/Art Process create a safe environment for groups or individuals to open up and explore their past wounds, traumas, or joyful experiences. "You don't have to know what caused the initial pain exactly; if you hold the space and follow the feedback loop inherent in the process, the healing will happen automatically," Etemad says.

Back when I arrived for the "Dance/Art Process" weekend, I knew how to go to the barre and take a ballet class, but I had little idea of how to just let movement come from within. I kept trying to perform. I was a dancer; had I trained so hard for so many years for this? My head told me it was all too "touchy-feely-Californian." Yet I sensed that something greater was happening-- a larger spiritual experience, and I wanted to be a part of it. Eventually I let go of my preconceived notions and was able to be a part of the group. Movement truly is a powerful source for change.

For more information, contact the Tamalpa Institute, P.O. Box 794, Kentfield, California 94914; 415/457-8555, fax [phone], or visit their Web site at www.tamalpa.org. For information on workshops with Anna Halprin, call [phone].

Heidi Landgraf is assistant to the editor in chief at Dance Magazine and is currently studying Expressive Arts Therapy at the Tamalpa Institute.

BE WITH schedule
(performed with Eiko & Koma's 1999 Snow
and Halprin's 2000 "From 5 to 110," an
excerpt from Memories from My Closet)

October 16-18
Terrace Theater, The Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C.;
800/444-1324, www.kennedy-center.org

January 17-19, 2002
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,
San Francisco;
www.yerbabuenaarts.org

January 29-February 3, 2002
The Joyce Theater, New York City;
212/242-0800, www.joyce.org

Wendy Perron is the New York editor of Dance Magazine.