HALPRIN SHOW ALIGNS VINTAGE, MODERN.

LAST MARCH, Anna Halprin brought a Marin County, California, dance audience to its feet with The Grandfather Dance. No doubt, some of these Californians applauded the fact that a woman who is skirting that mythic age of fourscore still has the wherewithal to perform, and to do it so well. But the great majority also seemed to express their admiration for what Halprin has spent a lifetime doing: investigating the connection between life and art.

Halprin's ongoing curiosity and unwillingness to accept conventional notions on just about anything--theatrical practices, race relations, artistic integrity, sources of creativity, the nature of community, the connection between the body and the mind, the healing power of art--have made her a considerable intellectual force in American dance. As she has widened her interest in working with non-professional dancers, the work she pioneered in the sixties, which forever changed our ideas about theatrical dance, has dimmed in our consciousness.

Wayne Hazzard, artistic director of Dancers' Group, a modern dance collective in the San Francisco Bay Area, wanted to remedy this situation. He is presenting an all-Halprin program June 2-3, not at his own small space but at San Francisco's 430-seat Cowell Theater, building the evening around Halprin's revolutionary 1965 Parades and Changes. "This is work that simply has to be seen," Hazzard said.

Parades and Changes is not choreographed in the traditional sense. The performers are given a score to follow. At the heart of the dance is a section in which performers undress themselves (The New York Times, at the time, called them "no-pants dancers from San Francisco") and then put their clothes back on. In the sixties, total nudity was still shocking. It no longer is. Yet the dance--as a performance three years ago proved--is just as powerful because of its very simplicity and the way it creates community among the dancers and with the audience.

In addition to Memories from My Closet, a series of solos (which include The Grandfather Dance), Halprin's world premiere, Intensive Care: Reflections on Living and Dying, looks to the future. Performing with her will be Jeff Rehg, David Greenaway and Lakshmi Aysola, all of whom have survived life-threatening disease. "As I age," Halprin said "and death becomes more proximate, I have learned to live life fully. What other choice do I have?"