DANCE : For UCI, ‘Episode No. 1’ Was Its First 25 Years

UC Irvine will be commemorating its silver anniversary this year with a commissioned modern-dance work that looks back on private experience.

Choreographed by modern-dance pioneer Bella Lewitzky, “Episode No. 1: Recuerdo (Remembrance)” will receive its premiere performances by the Lewitzky Company on Friday and Saturday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

“For our 25th anniversary, we wanted to have a dance company here, and I thought, would there be anybody I could pick that would be better than Bella Lewitzky?” said Betty Tessman, manager of Lively Arts and Lectures at the UCI. “The Lewitzky Company is one of the foremost modern-dance companies in the United States as well as internationally, and it just happens to come from California. I always feel we should honor the folks at home.”

Tessman declined to reveal the amount of the commission.

Lewitzky said UCI approached her without placing any restrictions on the work other than stipulating that “they were interested in receiving a premiere.”

“That was fine with me,” Lewitzky said in a phone interview from San Jose, where her company was performing last week. “It permits me to move forward. It means I am forced to the wall to complete a new piece. So much time is spent in bringing in new company members, maintaining repertory and just handling financial woes that it’s a pleasure to be able to make a work, which is the reason for all of the above.

“The work doesn’t have a specific link to UCI. But it has links. UCI has been very kind to us. We have appeared again and again on that campus. It feels like a home to us, which would be true for UCLA, Occidental College or Pepperdine University--the people who who have taken us under their wing. We celebrate with all of them. I’m not sure they celebrate, but we do.”

Inspiration for “Recuerdo” came from a score by Larry Attaway, Lewitzky’s longtime music collaborator. “Larry recorded a variety of musical things he was interested in,” Lewitzky said. “They were not totally composed pieces. They were ideas. When I could spring free, I would put them on, walk around, which is my method of bringing myself to a concentration point, and listen to them.

“When I came to this one kind of musical thought, I immediately locked into it and began thinking, ‘This could happen. That could happen.’ That became ‘Recuerdo.’

“I will say that the score is pure, unabashed melody,” she added. “It’s a real departure for him to give up electronic instruments.”

Attaway, who usually works in the electronic medium, will be the pianist at the weekend performances. The score may be expanded later for an English horn and a flute, according to the choreographer. “But since I will have a very tight deadline permitted me, we will be doing it with piano first,” she said.

Lewitzky said the new piece lasts about 17 minutes.

“Basically, it’s like an extended woman’s solo, which explains the ‘I Remember’ part of it,” she said. “It starts with a trio of women and then introduces a solo woman. Then the trio of women who act in a kind of a choric fashion disappears behind a scrim, and a man enters and there is a duet. Then the man also retreats to the past, and the woman remains in the final solo.

“It’s dark, yes. I think, sad is a good word. But it’s very touching, I hope. At least all my company is responding in that fashion.”

The new work stresses expressivity over technique, according to the choreographer.

“For the soloist, there are some extremely difficult technical things,” she said. “But, basically, it’s expressivity that is what is being worked on. When it got too dancy in a certain place, I said, ‘Whoa. That doesn’t belong there,’ and pared it down to something simple that would be hidden by a showy technique. It’s an emotional piece in a very simple fashion.”

Different dancers will be cast in the main roles on the two nights. “That is a policy of mine,” Lewitzky said. “It permits growth of more than one artist and protects the company in case of an injury.”

The new piece falls in the middle of two otherwise-different programs at the Barclay. The other Lewitzky works will be “Game Plan” and “Impressions No. 2 (Vincent van Gogh)” on Friday; and “Impressions No. 3 (Paul Klee)” and “Pas de Bach” on Saturday. Lewitzky is reviving “Game Plan” and “Impressions No. 3,” but in doing so resists the temptation to change the pieces to “update” them.

“The work comes out of a particular time and should reflect that time and where I was at that time and not pretend to be something else,” she said.

“It takes me about a year” to evaluate her own work, Lewitzky said.

“I’m so involved in the making process, it’s hard to gain distance from it,” she said. “Usually it takes me a tour of a new work before I can distance myself from it and look at it objectively and not subjectively.”