Dancer’s ‘Poem’ Creates a Private, Secret Beauty

Sen Hea Ha does not give up her secrets easily. In a seven-part program at HighwaysPerformance Space in Santa Monica on Thursday, the Korean contemporary dancer and choreographer emphasized exquisitely modulated body-sculpture that incorporated images from Buddhist, Christian and Korean shamanistic rituals.

However, except for the ceremonial “Sal’puri choom” (the most conventionally folkloric of her solos) and the dynamic “Lineage” (the most conventionally dramatic), her specific expressive purposes remained veiled, leaving her pieces a collection of beautifully crafted blank slates on which each viewer was free to inscribe personal meanings.

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In “Kuan Yin,” Ha interacted with members of the audience, smiling and looking glamorous in her gleaming gown and jeweled turban. But otherwise, she isolated herself with resolutely closed eyes, exotic period costumes and intense, impenetrable states of consciousness that defied conventional analysis. You either lent your own imagination to her dancing or stayed puzzled.

“Requiem,” “Incarnation” and “Lux Aeterna” all featured music by Gyorgy Ligeti and depicted processes of transition: respectively from one identity to another (signified by a change of costume), from floor-bound horizontal action to airy ascension and from increasingly desperate reaching to a calm, centered resolution in prayer.

“Exile,” the only duet, distilled themes from 20th century Tibetan history in a series of ravishingly delicate gymnastic partnering gambits, with co-choreographer Eko Supriyanto coiled around Ha, borne across her shoulders or matching the liquid drift of her limbs from the midst of complex body tangles.

Ultimately, though, the performers’ faultless dexterity seemed less remarkable than the work’s ambitious cross-cultural concept: using post-Pilobolus freedoms to create a private, intuitive yet gloriously holistic (body-mind-spirit) movement-poem.

* Sen Hea Ha and Eko Supriyanto repeat this program tonight at 8:30 p.m. at Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. $16. (310) 315-1459.