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From 5 to 110
Created and performed by Anna Halprin
Music: Vanessa-Mae, Storm and Ray Lynch, Sky of the Mind Poem: James Broughton "For Anna's Birthday"
Lighting: Patty-Ann Farrell

Snow C horeography: Eiko and Koma
Set: Eiko and Koma
Lighting: Eiko and Koma
Music: Rentaro Taki, Keoujo no Tuki (Moon Over Ruined Castle)

Eiko and Koma are no strangers to San Francisco, for they have performed here several times since they came initially early in their U.S. sojourn. The trio was commissioned by the Kennedy Center in Washington, debuted the program this fall and was seen January 19-February 2 at New York City's Joyce Theater. Five to 110 is part of a quartet of dances Halprin calls Memories from My Closet, and the Eiko-Koma Snow was commissioned by the American Dance Festival in 1999.

Having the three together, dances and artists, makes for a remarkable evening in dance theater. I am here to tell you that the third item was the best Snow job I have ever encountered.

Be With was executed to the sound of a single cello, Jeanrenaud sitting in a pool of light on a stage left landing. The cello sighed, was agitated, enjoyed aural lyricism, high scale wails and slow, slow fades to which the dancers moved in the slow deliberation which approximates the Marcel Marceau style of mime crossed with a lyrical extraction from the Japanese butoh tradition. Butoh, in turn, emerges from the pace and exploration of the human psyche in the Japanese Noh tradition. In Haniwa tomb figures you can see the spareness reaches back even further.

Playing along a scrim of mottled reds, browns and a tad of blue and essentially along a parallel line, the light comes up on Koma resting gently by himself in rough gauzy fabric of deep reds. On comes Halprin in similar garb in shades of burnt orange and rust. There is a slow encounter and they move across the stage, partly acquiescening, sometimes reluctantly. The backdrop becomes a wall to wail or rail against for Halprin, and there is a turning back. Eiko comes on the stage in white with yellow and green splashes down the front of what seems to be fluid chiffon. She is the ameliorating spirit, coaxing, interweaving in the highly stylized conflict between Koma and Halprin. They move back to stage right, but then, inevitably move towards stage left. As Halprin seems to pull herself together, her chest rises like a small sail inflated with the wind, and she leads the three off stage.

Halprin's solo From 5 to110 has a lot in common with Yiddish Theater comedians. Nothing of the indirection, refinement or subtlety of the previous trio is particularly in evidence. It's "Here I am and look at me, I'm over 80." It's her version of "Growing Up in Public", the classic old age solo which Remy Charlip helped to fashion for the late Lucas Hoving. There are skips, jumps, and a repetitious turn after each stanza of the James Broughton poem created in her honor. Skillfully delivered, it makes a strong case for "East is East and West is West" and the twain meet only in special collaborations.

If anyone reads that Eiko and Koma will appear in Snow, jog trot to the appropriate ticket window. It is an eerie, compelling master piece with Eiko gently staggering and floundering in the most remarkable snowfall I have seen on stage. Crystal Mann calls the partnership "exquisite dependency". Their mutual and individual ability to sustain contractions and plies was eloquently used here. Rentaro Taki's Keoujo no Tuki (Moon Over Ruined Castle) creates a sonorous and apt background for this extraordinary study of a lost relationship. Eiko's suppleness has never been seen to better advantage. Koma is in the background, emerging, fading, holding and embracing and letting go to retreat into the shadows as Eiko falters and dissolves into a heap as the snow continues to fall.