A few shining stars in Harris’ ‘Constellations’

The powerful back and shoulder muscles of dancer-choreographer Winifred R. Harris are the first things that move in her brilliant new solo “Shelling Peas” to music by Gurdjieff. But as her whole body becomes engaged in the contrast between the mundane kitchen duties of the title and the act of reaching out toward other personal possibilities, the solo develops into a mournful tribute to every woman everywhere who sacrificed her deepest ambitions and talents to sustain a family.

Premiered at Highways Performance Space on Friday, “Shelling Peas” is at once simple and profound, the first indelible dance creation of the new year and an index to Harris’ characteristic fusion of technical savvy and conceptual originality.

Unfortunately, it’s also the only time she dances on the program, a six-part showcase titled “Classical Constellations” that accompanies her locally based Between Lines company with music ranging from aristocratic antiquities by Handel to the playful, contemporary interplay between Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma.

In her new freewheeling yet formalist suite “Playing With Moon Beams,” Harris uses a score by Lori Saint John that starts with pristine Bach and then adds layers of jazz accents and Indian drumming. In the same way, Harris layers shoulder rolls, torso twists and even a show-dance strut onto a quasi-ballet vocabulary.

The result sometimes overtaxes the dancers’ technique but represents a far more sophisticated and winning look at classical dance than Harris’ parodistic “A Water Ballet” (to Handel) from a decade earlier, with its Baroque nymphs wearing swim goggles and other comic anachronisms.

Adrian Young usually dominates Harris’ ensembles with her skill and strength -- qualities deliberately undercut in the dramatic solo “Behind My Back, in Front of My Face” (music by Gorecki) where loss of control is the key issue, and her hands either rebel against her or become imaginary mirrors that make her flinch when she looks at them.

In “Voyage Down Under,” McFerrin/Ma inspire a breezy, mercurial showpiece in which Rogelio Carcamo, the lone male in the company, often dances in counterpoint to the women’s ensemble. Initially, he’s behind them but eventually moves to the front and is lifted as a kind of trophy. But you might not notice the structural gambits in the rush of moment-by-moment invention in the piece.

“Lollipops, Water and Rocks” assigns Sasha Stern and Ikumi Washio movement games on a stage full of balloons. But the decor and dancing never mesh with the lush, somber music by Shane Laser, so the duet doesn’t yield much meaning or impact -- one of Harris’ rare lapses in an evening teeming with mastery.

Besides the dancers previously mentioned, the company includes Pamela Chu, Cheryl Copeland, Laura Laser and Myshia Moten.

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Between Lines

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

When: “Classical Constellations,” 8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. “Saturday Night to Sunday Morning,” 2 p.m., Sunday

Price: $15 for matinee performances; $18, evenings