Bella Lewitzky’s Twist of Fate : Dance: Recently unearthed vintage film of an amazingly pliant Bella Lewitzky will highlight the choreographer’s benefit performance Sunday at Pepperdine.

In a sunny courtyard at Mills College, Bella Lewitzky sits on the ground doing stretching exercises, one leg straight in front of her and the other pulled up behind. The vertical stripes on her one-piece bathing suit heighten every spinal twist and turn--including the startling moment when Lewitzky bends forward over her outstretched leg, swivels her upper torso and touches a spot halfway between her knee and ankle with the back of her head. Yes, the back of her head . . .

Captured 52 years ago on silent, black-and-white 8mm home movies, these Lewitzky exercises are today a genuine back-to-the-future revelation: a glimpse of a 22-year-old Lester Horton dancer approaching the acme of pliancy and technical control. Now 74, Lewitzky says she “doesn’t remember being that flexible in the back”--but, then, she never saw the film until recently and says she didn’t even recognize herself in it.

Portions of the film and other Horton archival material will grace the Lewitzky company’s annual benefit performance at Pepperdine University on Sunday at 1 p.m. They form a prologue to the company’s Horton coaching activities this September at the Biennale de la Danse in Lyons--a festival saluting American choreographers.

One of the pioneers of modern dance, Horton established in Los Angeles the first racially integrated American dance company and the first theater in this country devoted exclusively to dance. His technique was developed and codified through Lewitzky, though it is best known today through work by his later company members: Carmen de Lavallade, James Truitte, Joyce Trisler and Alvin Ailey.

Horton died in 1953 and Lewitzky says that the Mills film was “the only record extant of Lester’s technique in the ‘30s and ‘40s.”

“I forgot about it for 20 years,” she says. “I simply didn’t realize that the footage had enormous historical value.” Lewitzky then searched for the film for 30 years, asking about it wherever she gave talks or classes.

Finally, a year ago February, she gave the keynote address at a conference in Phoenix, for the Society of Dance History Scholars--and someone in the audience supplied the name and phone number of Dorothy Gillanders, the woman who had made the film (and designed costumes for Horton) at Mills so long ago.

To three young dancers in Lewitzky’s company, the film is especially meaningful, for they are immersed in learning Horton technique to re-create one of Lewitzky’s early performing triumphs: “The Beloved,” a dramatic eight-minute duet choreographed by Horton for her in 1948. Diana MacNeil and Nancy Lanier are rehearsing Lewitzky’s role of the doomed wife and Tom Woolley is cast as the murderous husband, a character originally danced by Herman Boden.

All three find Lewitzky’s 1938 skills impressive. “She’s doing things in that film that I wouldn’t consider trying,” Woolley exclaims. “A real hard-core dancer--a powerhouse.” To MacNeil, “she looks like a gymnast, with the power of a weight lifter, but not the bulk or clumsiness.” And Lanier points out the “extreme way they trained (then). She took everything as far as it could go.”

In 1951, Lewitzky and Carl Ratcliff danced “The Beloved” for filmmaker Dick Hamm at an Art Center studio in Hancock Park. The choreography for Lewitzky’s new staging has been reconstructed from that film performance--though she has corrected what she considers major inaccuracies.

Both the staging and excerpts from the film will be seen Sunday at Pepperdine--and Lewitzky insists that her company will never dance “The Beloved” after that.

“It doesn’t belong on a program of mine because my work is so different,” she says. “They don’t live well together.”