Fellow Travelers Meet In `Be With'. (Reviews: National).

ANNA HALPRIN AND EIKO & KOMA, WITH JOAN JEANRENAUD TERRACE THEATER, JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 16-18, 2001

It was wise of Charles and Stephanie Reinhart, the Kennedy Center artistic directors for dance who sponsored the Anna Halprin/Eiko & Koma choreographic collaboration Be With, to present separate items by the collaborators as well. One could see where the artists were coming from.

Snow (1999) was a representative sample of Eiko & Koma's work. At first glance, this piece could be a three-dimensional version of a traditional Japanese woodblock print. It showed a nightscape with snow falling and a poised human form that, though solitary, was central to the scene. An instant in time was captured. The choreographers, who are also the set designers, unfroze this instant, but rather than return it to its natural timeline, they let it echo in another dimension, that of the feelings. To accomplish this, they added music (a German art song) and lighting that made the black-and-white scene look as if it had been filmed on color stock. Snowfall on the right of the stage seemed rushed by wind, while that on the left was hushed. The slow motion and sustained emotion emanating from the dancers suffused the space. Eiko was the central figure. Her body was stretched and skewed, her facial expression beset by a strong feeling, probably grief. Koma appeared and disappeared, ghostlike among the shadows. When the curtain closed, one had the sense that human emotion can be as intense and immense as the snowy night.

"From 5 to 110," an excerpt from Memories From My Closet (2000), gave a partial view of 81-year-old Anna Halprin's types of dancing. It's a solo that started as a lively character number. Halprin appeared in the guise of a better-off bag lady with a substantial suitcase instead of shopping bags. She travelled through her life as a dancer, beginning at age 5. The solo concluded in an open-ended way with Halprin talking unpretentiously, sagely about the dances she yet has to make. We gathered that she was at peace with her life as a radical, ritualist, nudist, personality, elder, and any role yet to come.

Be With, the premiere, was about being with others. It began with cellist-composer Joan Jeanrenaud bowing a series of phrases that, like aural stepping stones, formed a path. Halprin, entering on the left, was the principal wayfarer. The world through which she progressed was one of fire and coal: Painted in an abstract, expressionist style, the reds that dominated the backdrop and floorcloth were shot through with black. The wayfarer and the people who joined her (Eiko & Koma), then left her and eventually returned to her, were dressed in reds, oranges, and yellow. Neither the path nor the companionship on this journey were straightforward. Subservience, sexuality, and hostility surfaced in Halprin's relationships with her companions, creating countercurrents to trust, support, and love. A particularly jolting moment came when Koma, like a drowning man, clutched his rescuer, Halprin, and threatened both their lives. Ultimately, Halprin walked with a yearning reach, but faltering steps, offstage into light issuing from the right. There was an apotheosis in which all three figures were shown entombed, enshrined, mummified together but not entwined.

Jeanrenaud's music was crucial. It changed from semidissonant bowing to tapping to melodious bowing that became inaudible at the end. Moreover, she proved to be an alert, sensitive onstage performer. The problem was the dancers. At the premiere, Halprin, Koma, and Eiko behaved in too studied a way. Neither the vitality of Halprin's style nor the musicality of Eiko & Koma's was sufficiently apparent. That, though, can be rectified.