CLOSE-KNIT DUO TO EXPLORE DIVERSE ARRAY OF THEMES

True collaborations between musicians and dancers are rare enough. But the special bond between dancer Julia Morgan and harpist Melissa Morgan--who are not related--is truly unique. You could say it borders on the metaphysical.

“The first time I saw Julia dance,” Melissa said as she prepared for the pair’s debut concert in Three’s Company’s Low-tec Series this weekend, “it physically affected me. I felt something in my insides and my arm began shooting off on its own. It was a real physical reaction. I never had somebody affect me that way.”

Julia’s first exposure to Melissa’s sound structures was equally memorable.

“Three years ago, I was working on a solo piece (‘Embryonic’) and when I was two-thirds through the piece, I got into trouble. I realized I needed music--and nothing I had ever heard seemed right,” Julia said. “As soon as Melissa came into the picture, everything just clicked. When I was sitting and listening to her sounds, it inspired me and all my training became at the service of Melissa’s music. Something happened when I heard her play the pedal harp. My movement became much more honest and pure. It wasn’t contrived. It just flowed from the music.”

“As soon as that first connection was made,” said Melissa, “we knew we’d be working together for the rest of our lives--whether audiences wanted to see it or not.”

The two will perform Saturday and Sunday at Three’s Company’s Hillcrest studio.

They will explore themes as diverse as birth, dreams, nuclear proliferation and Japanese haiku in this seven-piece program. But, as Melissa explained, there is a thread that holds together the tapestry of aural, kinetic and visual images the team’s three-year collaboration has woven.

“There are a lot of different sources,” she acknowledged, “but these themes fit together. We actually see a program development from ‘Embryonic’ (the concert’s curtain-raiser) to the ‘Gong/Echo’ (a two-part piece that gives the performance its upbeat ending).

“It’s like a history,” said Melissa, “from very, very basic, very primordial, very ancient things. Then comes evolution--out of the mist.” This is represented in “Aptos,” a work that borrows its mysterious aural imagery from Debussy and its Grahamesque thrust from a 1978 dance work by Julia.

“And then comes primitive man,” Melissa said. “ ‘Birth’ is a sort of coming into the light.

“After a break, the focus shifts to matters of conscience, specifically, the nuclear issue. In the introductory bars of ‘Galactic Hymn,’ there are things I wrote thinking about Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It’s about total isolation, and it gets very discordant and strident.”

Most music lovers associate the harp with sweet, celestial sounds. But, as Melissa said, this weekend’s program will run the gamut “from the glissandos which most people associate with the harp to Oriental and discordant sounds.”

“Julia dances all of ‘Gong/Echo’ on her knees,” Melissa said. “(The dance evokes) a Himalayan monastery and the ringing of the gongs that call the monks to worship. The music for the first part was based on that sound--and then the second part of it was based on the echo. In the concept of our program, ‘Gong/Echo’ symbolizes man reaching higher. It’s a hopeful ending.”