A sparkling talent reignited

Los Angeles dancer-choreographer Winifred R. Harris was greeted with a wave of admiration and affection Thursday at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica as she returned to the stage after a two-year hiatus. In the prime of her career, she and her company, Between Lines, had run out of money. “I had to go to work,” she told a reporter during intermission.

Happily for us, Harris remains a charismatic dancer, as was evident in her classic “When Wet Came to Paper,” the only one of five of her works on the bill (including two premieres) in which she appeared.

Combining lyricism and strength, she brought intensity and integrity of impulse to all her movements in this five-dancer piece depicting a woman triumphing over a failed love affair. With supreme musicality, she could isolate a hand and make us focus entirely on that, or leap in joy or pain and make us react in sympathy.

By comparison, Lehua Harrison, Laura Laser, Hannah Turner and Rocklin Thompson -- diligent dancers all, with Thompson an especially strong partner -- looked hard-edged and even brittle.

One of the cruel penalties of an enforced layoff here came into view. Harris’ movement vocabulary, which demands balletic lightness and extension and Graham-esque gutsiness, and her focus on personal explorations are not easily assimilated.

Of the nine dancers in her new company, only two -- Laser and Adrian Young -- showed up on recent troupe rosters. The others -- Ikumi Washio, Sasha Stern, Shondra Leigh Weinberg and Teekay Kameyama -- are at different stages of mastery.

Thus it might be fairer to regard the two new pieces as works in progress. “I Danced in My Dreams,” for a cast of eight, focused on the rise and fall of a love affair, with Washio and Thompson as the strong central couple and Young and Harrison as a fierce alternative couple.

“In the Back of My Mind,” in which Kameyama made his only appearance with the rest of the company, was far harder to grasp. Different dancers became the focus at different moments. The intellectual and emotional logic of the sequencing was elusive. An edit might help.

Everything in both works might also become clearer and have more effect if Harris were in them -- or if Between Lines as a whole were given a chance to approach her level.

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Winifred R. Harris’ Between Lines

Where: Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica.

When: 8:30 p.m. today

Price: $18

Contact: (310) 315-1459