SACRIFICING ‘EVERYTHING’ FOR DANCE : ANOTHER SIDE OF LEE’S DANCE CHOREOGRAPHY

Incongruity is the stuff of life for Hae Kyung Lee.

On stage, the Korean choreographer and performance artist indulges in experimentalism--all the way to a surreal brutality chic of intense suggestion and pan-cultural imagery.

Offstage, she is dress-for-success conservative--the product of middle-class values inculcated by her parents in Seoul; someone who could be mistaken for a junior bank executive, hardly the punkish radical that has become the stereotype of postmodern dance.

“There are always two sides to a person,” says Lee, smiling modestly and smoothing the silverware set before her in a Westwood restaurant. “My whole attraction to creative dance is based on the pathway it gives me to bring out what is inside.

“And that’s where I really live. Not in conformity, not in what you see here and now, not in the exterior. I am sacrificing everything for this chance (to develop as an artist). It’s that important to me.”

The specific chance Lee refers to is her first full-evening performance Saturday at the Japan America Theatre. For the past five years, the locally-based graduate of UCLA (she received an M. A. in dance) has been sharing programs with other choreographers. Now her five-member company has the stage to itself.

As she explains, however, the new hourlong work on the program bears no resemblance either to her static depiction of primordial feminism (“Bega Orleyana”) or her essay in seething eroticism cum alienation (“Rut”). Instead, “Floating Stone” is a multimedia piece that “shows my lyrically mystic side . . . soft and flowing.”

It also incorporates the name of electronic composer, Carl Stone in its title; his commissioned score allows for one segment during which Lee and Stone will improvise.

“At first I was a little doubtful about the idea of electronic music,” says the choreographer. “My work is very human and personal. But what Carl conceived fits well. He says it’s a new stream of thought for him and a direct response to me.”

The other principal collaborator is Eric Lawton, a visual artist whose photo imagery “phases in and out of” what Lee calls her “most ambitious work ever.” Until now, she alone constructed every detail of her performance pieces.

“I go to as many art exhibits and concerts and performances as possible,” she says, “always searching for stimulation, for something to click in to--and that’s why I’m here, instead of in Korea. The most advanced thinking there was Martha Graham, but when I left home and the protection of my parents for New York and study at the Graham school (in 1978), I realized I needed more freedom to experiment.”

Graham, she explains, was too “classical, too limiting.” So her family suggested more formal education in a locale “less perilous” than New York. Lee had already earned a bachelor’s degree from Ewha University in Seoul. The idea of Los Angeles and UCLA met her family’s approval as an alternative plan--although their first choice was for her “to return home, get married and have children.”

At 33, Lee pleads guilty to disappointing her parents. “They are resigned to my pursuit of a career by now. And I owe everything to them. This concert, for instance: They are financing it.”

But she doesn’t identify with the usual dancer’s life style--struggling to be creative by night and earning a wage working in flower shops and shoe stores. Artistic zeal seems to supplant concerns over questions of financial dependence: “I don’t want the world intruding on the creative process,” Lee says.

“My rehearsals, for instance, begin with 15 minutes of meditation . . . to get rid of outside pileups. What happens on stage must reflect the deep, personal drives that connect us to life and to each other. There’s nothing else I’d sacrifice myself to. This is my whole commitment.”