BIG FINALE PLANNED BY 3’S COMPANY

Three’s Company is excited about its season finale.

One reason is that the modern dance troupe’s concert, “Printemps Premieres,” will be at the Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts at UC San Diego (tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m.)

“I think we’ve been inspired by the fact that we’re in a real theater, with sophisticated technical support,” said Nancy McCaleb, associate choreographer for the company and one of 13 dancers featured in the concerts. “I was inspired to do a theater piece, because there are 600 lights hung and focused for action in this theater. We’ve never had anything like that to work with before.”

“It’s the most exciting concert we’ve ever done,” said Jean Isaacs, Three’s Company director. “The pieces themselves are very different and there’s a lot of variety. We definitely were inspired by the theatrical aspects of the Weiss. I know my dance doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever done before. I also think it’s the most contemporary. The dances are way out there--very weird and unusual. But it’s not a heavy concert. There’s a lot of laughs.”

Isaacs is also excited that the ensemble has enlisted the talents of several artists from other disciplines to contribute to the creative process.

“We’re collaborating with artists, sculptors and musicians on these pieces,” Isaacs said. “Dance is too narrow. The new wave is ‘interarts,’ where two or three art forms are involved in making dances.”

Four of the pieces were set to original music; two of the musicians will perform onstage.

“Betzi (Roe) is collaborating with an artist,” McCaleb said. “I’m collaborating with a sculptor. Jean (Isaacs) and Pat (Sandback) are both collaborating with composers. And I’ve written my own score. I’m manipulating my voice electronically to accompany ‘Osirian Fields.’ ”

Isaacs was introduced to musician Miles Anderson (veteran of both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony) through the California Arts Council. Rapport was instantaneous and together they designed “Cork,” a quirky duet for Kate Harrison and Bruno Esparza.

“What Miles (Anderson) is doing here is not symphonic,” Isaacs said. “It’s electronic music with digital delays for trombone and voice. And it’s really wild.”

Anderson will accompany the dance onstage.

Harpist Marian Hays will be on hand as well to play her original music for Roe’s new solo, “Sky Sketch.”

“Marian was commissioned to do a piece for Jean,” Roe said. “Then Jean decided not to do it (because of a knee injury), and Marian and I began to collaborate. We’re both 38-year-old mothers of three and artists trying to make it all happen. A sculptor friend (David Beck Brown) called and said he’d like to do something, so we all came together. Everything just clicked.”

Brown’s contribution to the three-way collaboration is a hanging sculpture suggesting tree branches. “The piece is Oriental in overtones,” Roe said, “and I made the dancing very gestural, very contemplative and very technical.”

Since Isaacs’ knee is acting up, she had to scrap a new solo by Rich Burrows. But McCaleb uncovered a work by Carol Soleau of the Oregon Dance Theatre that she insists suits Isaacs to a “T.”

The offbeat dance, titled “Helen of Troy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Paris” is “simple, elegant and subtle,” McCaleb said.

Isaacs added, “And it’s all bourrees, so I never have to straighten my knee.”

David Landis of the acclaimed New York-based Mark Morris Dance Company returned to his home town to put the finishing touches on “The Flower of Strabane,” an ensemble work for nine that thrives on spicy, complex rhythms.

Sandback thought bigger than usual for “In Passing of Clouds,” an octet that had its genesis in a musical idea by percussionist Jon Szanto.

“He wanted to do something different--with a lot more acoustical instruments,” Sandback said, “and I said, ‘I could work with that,’ so we decided on the rhythms and the meter and got to work. But the ending is still not set.”

Look for a promising new face in this weekend’s concerts--former Stage Seven dancer Sandra Connolly--and a new star, Kate Harrison. Both Isaacs and McCaleb agree that “this is Katie’s show.”

After these performances at the Weiss, San Diegans will see much less of Three’s Company and Dancers. The troupe will turn to the touring circuit as a means of expanding their horizons.

“We’re not going to be dancing here very much,” Isaacs said. “We’ll be on the road. We need to be seen in other areas. Anyway, we’ll get more (money) for one work on a show in Los Angeles than we do for this whole concert.”