DANCE REVIEW : Conscious Symmetry in Show With 2 New Duets : Performance: Sensitivity to environmental issues, death and loss, and emotional experience by 3’s Company: Isaacs, McCaleb & Dancers.

SAN DIEGO â€”  Jean Isaacs and Nancy McCaleb are choreographers with a conscience. The two, who head 3’s Company: Isaacs, McCaleb & Dancers, seem of the same mind, if not in how they express their dance ideas, in what they choose to express.

In a program of six dances, three by each choreographer, presented at the company’s studio/theater on 5th Avenue Thursday night, Isaacs and McCaleb applied similar sensitivities to environmental issues, death and loss, and emotional experience. The result was an overall symmetry with the requisite effects of balance and completeness.

Not that the dances lacked energy. On the contrary, in Isaac’s “Tabula Rasa� from 1987 (reworked, presumably, to include men now that the company has, at last, notable talent in every male dancer), six dancers beat an agitated pulse to music by Arvo Part. They are pulled back and forth, responding to external forces, drawn to one light source after another like a small swarm of moths.

And McCaleb’s parallel finale, “Torch,� which had its premiere earlier this year, is a marathon, with dancers running in circles, literally and figuratively, in pursuits of the heart.

These two dances worked well as companion pieces, each in its witty way showing how little removed human nature is from nature in a grander sense. No matter how satin a shine we put on our sophistication, we are still creatures of instinct, and easily affected ones at that.

Yet even with these fairly high-momentum works, a meditative quality blew softly through the program, mouthing the word “war.�

Both choreographers presented a premiere piece, essentially investigating the same emotional territory--lamentation of death. Both new works were duets, and both were beautiful, mournful, and movingly performed to classical works of a sacred nature.

McCaleb’s “Reliquia� (a title slyly apropos to dance; from Latin for the remains of the dead; the root comes from “back-formation�) was the kinesthetic equivalent of the mezzo-soprano solo “Lagrimoso� (weeping) from Haydn’s liturgical “Stabat Mater.� The dance expressed melancholy and aching loss through classical purity of line. Emotional resonance was powerfully embodied in the movement of Odile Reine-Adelaide and her partner Eric Geiger; their refined technique is making a mark on the company.

Reine-Adelaide danced again, wonderfully, in Isaac’s duet titled “Elegy,� set to Vivaldi’s “Descordato.� This tribute to the dead was not as tightly performed as “Reliquia.� Her partner was Stacy Scardino, who does not match Reine-Adelaide’s fluidity, although Scardino gave an intensely emotional performance nonetheless.

These two works were not performed back to back, but were the central or fulcrum work in each half of the program. Like “Torch� and “Tabula Rasa� they too make striking companion pieces. Despite their similarities of tone, the exercise is satisfying because both works are finely crafted.

The opening dances for both the first and second halves of the show again demonstrated a conscious symmetry. Both were recent works, one about trees and the other about the lack of trees.

In “Canopy,� Isaacs employs a whirling tube and giant rain sticks, among other sensual elements, to capture the “feel� of life beneath a forest canopy. Company dancers Geiger, Scardino, Chris Ashley, Faith Jensen-Ismay, Spencer Nichols, Terry Wilson, and Gail Olson slithered like forest floor creatures or jerked like exotic birds during feather displays.

The full company also danced McCaleb’s parched “No Shade,� writhing among Styrofoam cups in a hideous landscape of projected images by photographer Richard Misrach.

Both choreographers showed their concern--their conscience--about environmental destruction, although in this case they came at it from opposite creative perspectives.

Sight lines at the 3’s Company studio/theater aren’t the best, but having dancers make leaps and dives a mere few feet away makes up for the limited visibility. And the closeness can be exciting dramatically. For a few moments in “Torch,� when the score abruptly stops and dancers freeze after running and running, the gasping for breath is audible--very audible and amusingly in sync, an effect that would be lost in a conventional venue.

As is usual, the atmosphere at this concert was homey and casual. Audience turnout exceeded expectation, so pillows and additional folding chairs were brought out. Except for the dancing itself, the evening had the feel of a dress rehearsal, with minor sound and lighting glitches that will undoubtedly disappear over the course of subsequent performances.

The program repeats tonight and Sunday, and continues for four performances Thursday through March 24. All performances begin at 8 p.m.