Taking the First Step : Seniors: A dance series, ‘Seeking the Light,’ aims to thaw the cold war between two generations of local Russian emigres.

They have common roots, but the two waves of Russian immigrants are separated by a lifetime.

One group came to the United States to escape czarist pogroms or Soviet rule in the early 1900s, then raised families here. The other fled Soviet anti- Semitism over the last two decades. Both groups settled in large numbers on the Westside--mainly in West Hollywood and the Fairfax District--but are divided by differences in custom and language that have made them uneasy, even hostile, neighbors despite the similarities.

Those who emigrated in the early 1900s came with nothing and got little help as they struggled for a foothold in America. To them and their American-born children, the Russians who arrived recently as refugees have it easy, with government financial help, medical care and public housing.

The newer arrivals, resented as insular and pushy by longtime residents, cling to their Russian language, and some have been heard to wonder why their predecessors don’t have more to show for a life spent in the land of opportunity.

Social service workers who deal with both groups of residents, many of whom are senior citizens, hope that an upcoming dance series will soften tensions by dramatizing the divisions and offering a chance to confront them openly.

Dancers from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts this week will perform “Seeking the Light: Russian Immigrants 1902 and 1992” at three Westside sites.

The dance drama--mixing spoken word, Russian melodies and Yiddish songs--enacts each group’s flight from brutal anti-Jewish oppression in the former Soviet Union. The unease that develops between them here erupts in an angry confrontation, then gives way to recognition of their common experiences as refugees and immigrants. A closing segment underscores their ties through a series of sentimental reflections by children and grandchildren.

“There’s an intercultural clash. Although they’re all from the same place geographically, it was a very different place in the 1920s than in the 1970s and 1980s,” said choreographer Meri Bender, a teacher at the high school and a familiar figure on the Los Angeles dance scene. “Art is very powerful, and if we can just get people to come to the performances, we’ll have a discussion somehow and get things out in the open.”

The tensions depicted in the piece are well-known to the people who work with Westside Russian emigres. Ruth Egger, activity director of the West Hollywood Senior Center at Plummer Park, commissioned the project after seeing a Bender dance drama about the elderly that was based on interviews.

“After the spring riots, there was such a need to find ways to bring different ethnic groups together. I just felt the need to do something to ease the tension between these groups in West Hollywood,” Egger said. The work was sponsored by the senior center and the Westside Jewish Community Center.

Although exact figures are unknown, an estimated 40,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union have settled in the Los Angeles area since 1973, according to Miriam Prum Hess, a resettlement specialist with the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles. Their presence is most evident on the east end of West Hollywood, where tiny Russian food shops sport Cyrillic signs and emigres crowd Plummer Park on warm days and evenings.

Bender, whose grandparents and father-in-law emigrated from Russia, prepared for the dance production by conducting interviews with nearly 30 Westside emigres and the children of early immigrants.

She unearthed fault lines that often go unnoticed by outsiders. Longtime residents--early immigrants and their children--were especially irked by what they viewed as special help given to the newcomers, who as officially recognized refugees are eligible for Supplemental Security Income, Medi-Cal insurance for the poor and federal housing aid.

Their view is that “when they came over here in the ‘20s--how difficult it was. They got $1 a day. No one looked after them. They rented a cot,” Bender said. Now, “they feel their neighborhood is changing. The signs are going up in Russian. They go into a bakery and are greeted in Russian. A lot of them don’t remember their Russian.”

Because many of the recent elderly immigrants don’t speak English, they are oblivious to the grumbling, Egger said. They are equally unaware of the widespread perception that they are rude for cutting in line or pushing through crowds at the market--tactics that were crucial for surviving chronic food shortages in the former Soviet Union. One segment of the dance piece pokes fun with an exaggerated depiction of this pushing and shoving.

Lyubov Litvin, who fled the Black Sea city of Odessa with her husband and two children in 1979, said such portrayals may show fellow refugees “why other people don’t like us”--and help longtime residents understand the habits of their neighbors.

“I can feel the way it irritates older Americans,” said Litvin, who will translate the production’s spoken lines into Russian. The new arrivals, she added, “come from a completely different system, a completely different style of life. . . . They can’t change right away.”

While the production spotlights the experiences of the Westside’s Russian Jewish population, participants say the themes are universal. “It doesn’t matter (that it’s) Russian,” said dancer Melissa Stockton, a senior who portrays one of the newcomer refugees. “It’s about oppression--people hating you for what you are.”

Amid recent debates over immigration--from Zoe Baird’s controversial nomination to local calls for stricter handling of undocumented immigrants--Russian activists add that “Seeking the Light” may serve as a useful reminder.

“All of us are immigrants. It just depends on what generation,” said Helen Levin, a Soviet refugee who runs the Russian Community Center in West Hollywood. “All of us should remember this.”

(“Seeking the Light: Russian Immigrants 1902 and 1992” will be performed at three the Westside Jewish Community Center, 5870 W. Olympic Blvd., on Tuesday at 2 p.m.; Fiesta Hall in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park, 1200 N. Vista St. Thursday at 2 p.m.; and Fairfax Adult School, 7850 Melrose Ave. Thursday at 7 p.m.)