DUO BREAKS DOWN WALLS ; CO-MOTION DANCERS CELEBRATE THEIR LONG PARTNERSHIP AND THE MYSTERY, COMEDY OF THE MIDLIFE CRISIS

------------------------- DANCE PREVIEW

"Dancing Through the Wall" Co-Motion Dance, 8 p.m. today-Saturday, Broadway Performance Hall, 1625 Broadway ($12-$15; 206-382-0626). -------------------------

Hitting middle age is like hitting a wall. Your body, your abilities and even your philosophy of life change and shift. If you are a dancer, the alterations can be especially dramatic. And comic.

For 21 years, dancers Gail Heilbron and Jesse Jaramillo have been partners and co-directors of Co-Motion Dance. The company, long a major player in the Seattle dance scene, has at times been large scale, with as many as 16 dancers housed in a two-story studio space in Pioneer Square. At other times, it has been composed, as it is now, of just the duo. This week, Heilbron and Jaramillo present "Dancing Through the Wall," a concert that celebrates their long partnership, and the mystery and comedy of the midlife crisis.

"Middle age is a kind of second adolescence. Once you give in, you become aware that there is another side of the wall where there's a different kind of freedom. Your spirit becomes more vital," Heilbron said.

Rehearsing their grueling duet called "Infinite Affinities," the pair danced with that unique tenderness and trust that can sometimes flower. They react to each other with fluidity, and speed. Afterward, still catching their breaths, they talked about being so familiar with each other's rhythms that they can blindly sense where the other person is, and how to execute a leap, a fall or a catch. Choreographer and teacher Bill Evans once created a piece for them that involved some sideways leaps into each other's arms. "When he set it on another pair of dancers, they kept calling us up, saying, `How did you do that?' " Jaramillo recalls.

Jaramillo and Heilbron met at a dance class in the early '70s when they were both new to Seattle. "We looked across the room and realized that we were both doing the exact same warm-up," Jaramillo said.

Heilbron grew up in White Plains, N.Y., and has been dancing since she was 4. She attended performances of the great modern-dance companies, including Martha Graham and Jose Limon. "I was so touched by the performers," Heilbron said. "I began to understand what it meant to be a dancer." She received her MFA in dance from Case Western University.

Jaramillo, who grew up in west Texas, did not start dancing until he was an adult. "In high school and college at North Texas State, I did every kind of physical activity and sport, football, basketball, etc." It was when he was studying to get his teaching certificate that friends talked him into taking a dance class. Soon he was hired to tour with the Shirley Morden company. He has worked as a teacher over the years in addition to the dance projects that he and Heilbron have taken into the public schools through Co-Motion Dance outreach programs.

Describing themselves as kinesthetic learners, they are enthusiastic about teaching dance at the elementary-school level. "It's amazing what just a single class can do. We had one child who was so difficult he was kept isolated in the classroom between two bookshelves. Because he had a chance to be an independent leader in the dance workshop, things began to turn around for him," Heilbron said.

"Dancing Through the Wall" will contain a rousingly comic "middle-age rap," and a scene with a crone character Heilbron has developed. In rehearsal, Heilbron's crone is riveting. It is startling to see the powerful, vibrant dancer transformed into a physically debilitated old woman. When she speaks, describing the "space of the spirit between life and death," she embodies the kind of transformation that is part of the central metaphor of the work: spirit overcoming body.

Of Co-Motion's longevity, publicist and choreographer Ace Petersen says, "They've been here for 21 years, but given all the challenges of funding and survival, a dance company's life really ought to be measured in dog years." That would make Co-Motion about 147 years old, a ripe and rowdy middle age.