Appetites are amply sated

The pungent smell of sauteed onions and curried zucchini filled Highways Performance Space on Thursday night as choreographer-dancer Lionel Popkin, in collaboration with dancer Carolyn Hall, offered the premiere of his delectable, artistically nourishing “And Then We Eat.”

Popkin, now locally based, was formerly a member of New York’s Trisha Brown Dance Company, where he honed the articulated gestures and quirky postmodern sensibility that effervesced in this 30-minute tour de food.

Making use of a spice rack (constructed by dancer-woodworker Stefan Fabry) that also was home to a hot plate, a frying pan and raw vegetables, Popkin offered riffs on cooking and dining a deux that proved the perfect counterpoint to the dance itself. Performing to an original, gently percussive score by Andy Russ (sound engineer for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company), he and Hall began the piece seated on the floor, executing kitchen duties, before moving into flights of fancy involving swiveled hips, unison dips and bends, and ballroom-style, hands-on-waist turns.

As steam rose from the pan, the pair also reached a zenith of corporeal possibilities. Popkin, lying prone, became a yoga mat for Hall, who crawled and crouched on his resilient body. Ah, but the fragrant zucchini lured them to their repast.

And then they ate.

Earlier, Popkin’s 20-minute solo “Are You Done Yet?” (from 1996) featured the performer grappling with stacks of newspapers as information overload proved too much for him. Scratching and rubbing himself with the publications, he intermittently talked about the “end,” in an oblique reference to obituaries as well as his dance. Call it absurdity squared, but when, loose-limbed and pliant, he began stuffing his jumpsuit with crinkling papers -- enhancing the music of Tom Cora and Fred Frith -- he suggested he could have given Ray Bolger’s Scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz” a run for his money.

Hall too performed a solo, “Open Air Corners” (choreographed with Popkin in 2002), filling the space with expansive lunges, leaps and delicious arm movements. Taking her cues from another Russ score that veered from gamelan sounds to knocks on wood to footfalls, she also took butoh-like poses, tumbled and turned, all as if she were charting life’s serpentine journey.