By ANNA KISSELGOFF

Layers of meaning and nonmeaning, free association through recited texts and heightened abstract gestures, tension, hostility, sensuality, raw physicality, formal structures and social issues: all these elements did not so much merge as coexist in the high-energy assemblages of choreography that made Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane the choreographers of choice in the first half of the 1980's.

"The Phantom Project," a creative showcase of some of their early joint pieces, which runs through Sept. 20 at the Kitchen, is presumably a retrospective as part of the 20th anniversary of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Yet on Wednesday night, these revivals looked more like restagings, strikingly presented with new sets by Bjorn G. Amelan and transformative lighting by Robert Wierzel.

Everything is less anarchic, less rough and tumble than in the old days. A streamlined polish reigns.

Mr. Zane, who died in 1988 at 39, and Mr. Jones were partners in life and onstage. The humor and confrontations of their partnering in dance had much to do with their relationship.

Rather than act as impostors attempting to reproduce this personal chemistry, the current performers wisely remain themselves and Mr. Jones has made the program something new for our time.

Its virtue lies in its intimate focus. When the company moved into opera-house scale in the mid-1980's, it occasionally wound up with theoretical overload and too much décor. "Did we know what we were doing?" Mr. Jones asked rhetorically while dancing a solo on Wednesday to introduce "Valley Cottage (A Memory)." A video image of himself and Mr. Zane dancing that piece in 1980 was projected behind him. The unseen audience laughed inexplicably.

But today the close body contact would be taken for granted as it was in the 1982 "Duet x 2," in which Wen-Chung Lin danced a vigorous duet with Malcolm Low and then repeated it in part with Germaul Yusef Barnes. Adam Kuruvilla Lelyveld, a young guest artist, sang fragments from "Don Giovanni," adding a touch of poignant mystery as he materialized twice behind swinging doors in a darkened corner.

Mr. Jones introduced a new version of "Continuous Replay," based on a variation of 45 hand gestures that Mr. Zane performed in a 1981 film while Catherine Cabeen and Shaneeka Harrell executed the dance live; Helen Thorington, a composer and early collaborator, read a hard-luck story related in an interview with an elderly woman befriended by Mr. Zane.

Like this fabulous and multilayered piece, Leah Cox's performance of "Floating the Tongue" was a tour de force. Here she described her movements as she danced them.

The program was completed by the still overly long "Blauvelt Mountain (a Fiction)" and a highly emotional restaging of "Cotillion" with Mr. Barnes, Asli Bulbul, Ms. Harrell, Ayo Janeen Jackson, Mr. Lin, Mr. Low and Erick Montes.

Source: NY Times