Keely Garfield in 'Twin Pines.' Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

“I like to layer meaning and imagery. I think that creates an opportunity for people to enter where they will; one will come in through that door or an open window, someone else is going to dive into the middle of it,” Keely Garfield said recently as she was readying Twin Pines for its Danspace Project performances this week. A highly regarded, thoughtful and instinctive choreographer whose pieces delve deeply while integrating flashes of wit, she notes that her ongoing work with yoga and Zen practices is closely connected to her work in dance.

Garfield, who at one point referred to her recent works as “surreal autobiography,” works with oncology patients as an integrative yoga therapist through her training with the Urban Zen Foundation. Shortly before she went into rehearsal for this new incarnation of Twin Pines—which was first performed in November 2010—she was in Haiti, offering her knowledge and techniques in hospitals not only to the patients but also staff, including those who wash the floors. She plans to return in February.

“The way my path has developed, I’m deep in other mindful practices. They all feel like an extension or outgrowth of dancing—ways to explore and inhabit and negotiate being in a body,” she said by phone from St. Mark’s Church during a break from technical rehearsals.

She welcomes the opportunity to return to Twin Pines, which had an underpublicized but sold-out three-day run at Duo Multicultural Arts Center. She performs in the two-part work with Omagbitse Omagbemi, Anthony Phillips and Brandin Steffensen in a setting that blends the fantastical with the mundane. (Garfield designed the sets and evolving costumes herself.) Matthew Brookshire performs the often plaintive music—his own as well as snippets of popular songs by the Beach Boys and Duran Duran—accompanying his vocals with electric guitar, harmonium and ukulele.

The title and the strong presence of six tree stumps as part of the set suggest a connection to trees. While Garfield alludes to this, she emphasizes other aspects and elements when discussing the work, whose two halves originally took place on separate floors at Duo, separated by a short film, but will now be performed in a single area with a brief pause.

“It still has an odd mix of Zen moments up against activity, boldness and color,” she said. “The people moving onstage are just the activities of the mind. I feel that the work, in many ways, is a process of deeply listening. It has that sense of changing from altered moods, places—exploring potentially dangerous things. I’m interested in: How do you present boredom onstage? How dangerous is that going to be?

“At certain points, I thought of a tree in its various meanings—they are endless: tree of life, family tree, the Buddha achieving enlightenment under a tree. A human body looks like a tree, with the veins and arteries.” She also alludes to Norse and Native American mythology, with the idea of a tree stump as container for the soul.

Garfield encountered the tree stumps that are now so integral to the piece by chance. Leaving the studio during the original rehearsals for the piece, she came upon a tree being cut down on Second Avenue. She carried the stumps (which have since acquired names, all beginning with M) up five flights of stairs, then to Duo, and now over to Danspace. “Trees insinuated themselves into the work. The first performances coincided with when the Park Slope hurricane hit where I live; trees were down outside my house.”

She describes the first half of Twin Pines as “more fable/fairy story; the stage is more cluttered and populated. There are more extreme actions that happen in the first half. In the second half, things clear out; space empties out more; there are more extended passages of dancing. It’s perhaps a little more abstract. It mirrors the experience of meditating: the more you sit, the more bored you become with it—actually, the more ease there is.”

Garfield knows the St. Mark’s venue extremely well, having had her last two major productions presented by Danspace Project. “Each time, I’ve used the space in a different orientation. I love this space; I think that it is not just grand and voluptuous but also lends itself to intimacy and to extraordinary focus. This opportunity has been a way to fulfill my desire to hone the material, flesh it out. I feel like it’s gone from a line drawing to an oil painting.”

Twin Pines
Jan. 19–21, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, 131 E. 10 St. (at 2nd Ave.), www.danspaceproject.org; 8 p.m., $18.