THE FORCE ISN’T WITH THEM : Erick Hawkin’s Troupe Comes Bearing Philosophy of Gain Without Strain and a ‘Divine’ New Work

Perhaps local dance fans trekking to the Orange County Performing Arts Center to see the Erick Hawkins Dance Company on Wednesday should forget every step they’ve ever seen executed there.

Forget American Ballet Theatre. Forget New York City Ballet. Forget the Paris Opera Ballet, the Australian Ballet Company, the Joffrey and the Martha Graham Dance Company.

Hawkins, one of the great pioneers of American dance, began his training with classical ballet. He later performed with Graham’s troupe for over a decade. But he rejected his roots after leaving that company and created a different kind of movement that shunned extreme tension and forced control. It will be seen in “Divine Hero,” his new work based on Southwest Indian myths, which will be given its West Coast debut during the Imagination Celebration (see accompanying story, Page 10).

“Look, if an engine strains, it’s not a very good engine,” he said in a recent phone interview from his New York City home. “When one has complete mastery, things appear to be effortless.

“Our society is accustomed to seeing that strain. But after all, when you see a concert pianist, you don’t want to see him strain at it.”

Hawkins himself has been under great strain lately. After preparing two world premieres for his recent New York season, the 82-year-old choreographer, who suffered a stroke in 1988, fainted from exhaustion when the two-week season ended earlier this month and spent three days in a hospital.

But he spoke with ardor about the work he’ll bring here, and he plans to appear with his troupe to recite part of a narrative text that accompanies “Divine Hero.”

“I spent a long time writing the script because the myth talks about miraculous things that you can’t put on the stage,” said Hawkins, whose troupe marks its 40th anniversary this year. “I had to dig out the things that could be embodied in action.”

The new piece relays the universal myth of a hero, Killer-of-Enemies, who overcomes adversity to achieve maturity. Adversity looms as “monsters,” or creatures of nature: Big Giant, Monster Eagle, Big Owl and Monster Fish, clad in starkly contemporary, colorful costumes that include feathered headdresses and masks with geometric and symbolic shapes.

“The hero encounters these monsters, and he defeats them and shows that he’s a killer of enemies,” said Hawkins. Then the hero returns to his mother, Changing Woman, and undergoes a kind of rebirth.

A search for psychological self-enlightenment long ago led to his interest in Native American lore, the choreographer said. In fact, the monsters that his hero conquers are actually internal “enemies,” such as fear and doubt, he explained, and the dance is like an allegory about how one “comes to terms with one’s own life.”

The theories of psychologist Carl Jung came into play as well, he said. “Years ago I read a book by Jung called ‘The Integration of Personality.’ You could say the way the young man goes off by himself is (how he) puts his life together.

“In every culture, people have tried to find the true, the right or the sound way of living their life. This dance was part of my search to find my own best way of living.”

Hawkins, born in Trinidad, Colo., saw his first dance at 17 while at Harvard University, where he eventually earned a degree in the Greek classics.

Taking his first dance steps at the ballet barre, he studied with George Balanchine, widely considered to be the century’s greatest choreographer. He went on to dance during the 1930s with two troupes that were precursors of Balanchine’s New York City Ballet.

But Hawkins craved a more avant-garde art. So, in 1938 he joined the company of a modern dance giant, the late Martha Graham. He was her first male dancer and stayed as a principal member for 12 years, nearly two of them as her husband.

Ultimately, he left Graham’s troupe, however, to pursue his own vision.

From early on, Hawkins studied both Western and Eastern philosophy, a fascination reflected in his dance aesthetic and approach to life.

In contrast with Graham technique and ballet, he sought a way to move that is perhaps best described by his axiom: “Less strain, more gain.”

Instead of “bound flow,” as he once called Graham’s system, he based his on “free flow”: the idea that that the arrow must shoot itself and that movement should be unforced and harmonious with the body’s natural impulses. Likewise, he espouses Zen Buddhist and Jungian concepts of “letting things happen” as a way to live as well as dance.

Sometimes bristling with energy, spiked with exuberant kicks or robust air turns, Hawkins’ dances are frequently characterized by their lambency and rippling flow, full of playful tilts and pivots, small, gentle foot steps and soft leaps.

Also unlike his early mentors, Hawkins shuns overt dramatic expression, and his works are often abstract and plotless. While mining religion, myth, literature and history for ideas, he seeks eternal essence and sees modern dance more as poetry and metaphor.

“Divine Hero,” given its world premiere in New York City last month, has a “very definite narrative” elucidated by its text. But Hawkins said that the spoken script is non-linear and, that characteristically, nothing about the work is literal.

Composer Lucia Dlugoszewski, Hawkins’ collaborator for some 40 years, said he mirrors his text “word by word and concept by concept by making unusual metaphors in movement.”

“What one has to be prepared for is to watch it moment by moment, because it’s happening moment by moment,” she said. “There might be an instant when the hero merely lifts an arm, but that illuminates some inner essence.”

Hawkins has always insisted on live music, and “Divine Hero,” about 50 minutes long, will be danced to a score by Alan Hovhaness, played by the nine-member Erick Hawkins Theatre orchestra.

He has never choreographed for children, however, and “Divine Hero” was commissioned specifically for the sixth annual Imagination Celebration children’s arts festival. The event is a program of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which co-commissioned the work with the Orange County Performing Arts Center and a similar center in Kentucky.

Asked to suggest a work for the commission, Hawkins recommended “Divine Hero.” He had long been planning to do the piece and felt that the universality of its mythic narrative would appeal to children.

“Children love myths,” he said. “That’s why they love fairy tales.”

He thought costumes that reflect the work’s poetic nature would capture children’s imagination, too.

The highly stylized masks by Ralph Lee were inspired by the “non-realistic, non-representational” Southwest Indian visual idiom, Hawkins said. The character of the Sun, for instance, wears a mask “that is just a poetic embodiment of the power of the sun.” Another mask that consists of a hand covering the dancer’s face “is just something out of pure poetry and is almost impossible to talk about.”

New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff said the piece “talks to both children and adults alike.” Did Hawkins alter his choreographic approach to reach young audiences?

“I didn’t play down to children,” he said. “I just made a dance. As a friend said, if art is very good, there’s not very much difference between how the child reacts and how adults react. Children may get something different from it, but if the art is valid, they’ll be intrigued.”

Who: Erick Hawkins Dance Company.

When: Wednesday, April 24, at 7 p.m.

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.

Whereabouts: One block east of South Coast Plaza shopping center.

Wherewithal: $3.

Where to call: (714) 556-ARTS.