MUSIC : The Hawkins Code : Effortlessness is everything for the famed choreographer, who will bring his new dance about Navajo myths to Orange County

“Look, if an engine strains, it’s not a very good engine,” Erick Hawkins said. “When one has complete mastery, things appear to be effortless.”

Hawkins knows a bit about mastery: The 82-year-old choreographer has been in the world of dance for the equivalent of three generations and has been associated with some of its creative giants.

Dance fans will have an opportunity to see Hawkins’ “effortless” choreography Wednesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, where “Divine Hero,” his new work based on a Navajo myth, will be given its West Coast premiere.

Hawkins, who suffered a stroke in 1988, himself has been under great strain lately. After preparing two world premieres for his recent New York season, the choreographer collapsed from exhaustion when the two-week season ended earlier this month and he spent three days in a hospital.

But in a phone interview from his New York City home he spoke at length, with enthusiasm, about the work he will bring to Orange County and about dance legend Martha Graham, to whom he was married briefly.

Hawkins plans to appear with his troupe to recite part of a narrative text in “Divine Hero.”

“The speaking goes quite continuously through the whole dance, and I’ve never done anything like that,” said Hawkins, whose troupe marks its 40th anniversary this year.

“I spent a long time writing the script because the myth talks about miraculous things you can’t put on the stage. I had to dig out the things that could be embodied in action.”

The new piece relays the universal myth of a hero, Killer of Enemies, who overcomes adversity to achieve maturity. Adversity looms as “monsters,” he said: Big Giant, Monster Eagle, Big Owl and Monster Fish, clad in starkly contemporary, colorful costumes that include feathered headdresses and masks with geometric and symbolic shapes.

“The hero encounters these monsters, and he defeats them and shows that he’s a killer of enemies,” said Hawkins, who has crafted dances inspired by Native Americans before. “Then he goes back to his mother, Changing Woman, and has a kind of rebirth.”

A search for self-enlightenment long ago led to Hawkins’ interest in Native American lore. “In my own psychological investigation, I got into some of the Southwest Indians,” he said. “I wanted to find what they knew about life. And it just happens that this spoke to me.”

The monsters that his hero conquers are actually “enemies” within the human soul, he explained, and the dance is like an allegory about how one “comes to terms with one’s own life.”

The theories of psychologist Carl Jung came into play as well, he said. “Years ago I read a book by Jung called ‘The Integration of Personality.’ You could say the way the young man goes off by himself is (how he) puts his life together.

“In every culture and tradition, people have tried to find the true, the right or the sound way of living their life. This dance was part of my search to find my own best way of living.”

Hawkins, an inventor’s son born in Trinidad, Colo., saw his first dance at 17 during a break from Harvard University, where he eventually earned a degree in the classics.

Taking his first dance steps at the ballet barre , he studied with George Balanchine, widely considered to be the century’s greatest choreographer. He went on to dance during the 1930s with two troupes that were precursors of Balanchine’s New York City Ballet.

But Hawkins craved a more avant-garde art. So in 1938 he joined Graham’s company. He was her first male dancer and stayed as a principal member for 12 years, nearly two of them as her husband.

“Martha taught me to live with courage. She had a vision and she went after it with imagination and with courage,” he said of the pioneering dancer he was married to from 1948 to ’50.

Hawkins said that Graham--along with Doris Humphrey and Isadora Duncan--”opened up the range of possibilities so that there was not just not one way of moving. I’ve always been grateful to her because she unleashed the imagination so that in inventing movement, I was reckless in trying to find new ideas.”

Ultimately, he left Graham’s troupe to pursue his own vision, one that helped shape modern dance.

“One of the areas where I disagreed with Martha is that she believed in strain. I find that the most beautiful movement is without strain. It’s as though it obeys the principle that if you obey nature, nature will obey you and you don’t have to willfully make the movement happen. You just let it happen.”

Graham, who died at 96 on April 1, did some of her greatest choreography for roles danced by Hawkins. He was her partner in “American Document,” the Husbandman in “Appalachian Spring,” the Ringmaster in “Every Soul Is a Circus” and He Who Beckons in “Dark Meadow.”

While Hawkins gratefully acknowledges her influence on him, he unabashedly asserts that he had an impact on her as well.

“There’s no question about it. By being the first man to work with Martha, I let her be a woman. I upheld the male principle, and she didn’t have to; she could be a woman.”

Hawkins said he and Graham did not remain close. In fact, he had not spoken to her since 1968. He declined to discuss the details of their relationship.

“After I divorced her, I saw a few (of her) dances and I was friendly. But beyond that point, I don’t care to talk about it. It’s just one of the will o’ the wisp things. (In relationships) nobody knows what’s right. It’s just personal likings and personal characteristics.”