For some, modern dance, with sequences of seemingly abstract movements, can be hard to fathom. Like contemporary music or art, some get it. Some don’t.

But at dawn on New Year’s Day, people, gathered at Eastport’s breakwater to see the sun rise on a new century, will be treated to a dance performance meant to reflect their seaside community’s history and their lives and hopes.

At first light, the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, a troupe of professional dancers and community members, will perform the Dawn Dance.

“This is a dance of meditation and reflection where we are really trying to look backwards and forward at the same time,” Martha Wittman, a dancer and the troupe’s choreographer, explained. “And each person will reflect on the things that are important at this particular morning at this particular time. … The millennium means many different things to different people.”

Based in Takoma Park, Md., the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange chose to perform in Eastport because the Maine community will be the first city in the United States to see the sun rise on the year 2000. The troupe has performed in cities and rural communities around the globe from Los Angeles to Gdansk, Poland.

“The idea of first light, seemed very beautiful to us,” Wittman said. “There was a connection to a journey that would begin in the east and travel across the country.”

Wittman spent several weeks meeting and working with Eastport residents. She talked with fishermen and factory workers and even people “from away,” who had fallen in love with the area and stayed. To choreograph the dance, she asked residents about their livelihoods and roles in the community.

Wittman said people shared wonderful stories. One man had spent much of his life “tipping” or cutting balsam tips to make Christmas wreaths.

“I had never heard the word tipping before,” Wittman said, recalling how the young man showed her how boughs were plucked from the balsam fir trees. Imitating him, the choreographer reached into the air and gracefully plucked a bough off a tree. That movement and others will be woven into the New Year’s Day dance.

Nearly a quarter century ago, the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange’s founder, Liz Lerman, created a dance about her mother’s death featuring professional dancers and adults from a Washington, D.C., senior center. The piece, “Woman of the Clear Vision,” spurred the formation of the unique dance troupe combining professional dancers and citizens. By the mid-1980s, the company was touring extensively.

The Dance Exchange combines performance with workshops and professional training. Its aim is to make community residency a model for touring dance companies.

In Maine, the Bates Dance Festival has collaborated with the Maine Arts Commission, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and the Eastport Area Chamber of Commerce to oversee a statewide millennium project that will produce dance performances in Lewiston, Eastport and Deer Isle.

Over the next three years, the Dance Exchange will hold movement and storytelling workshops in each of those communities. Eastport’s New Year’s dance one of three public performances scheduled. The other two will be held next fall on Deer Isle, and in August 2001 at the Bates Dance Festival. The dances share common elements and eventually will become part of the Dance Exchange’s nationwide Hallelujah Project.

Rand Castile, an Eastport resident and chairman of the Eastport Area Millennium Festival, participated in one of the dance workshops held in Eastport.

“I thought I was going to be the only man there,” he said with a grin.

In the workshop, dancers had to switch partners. Standing in a circle, the male participants found themselves dancing with women they had just met. Then the circle changed and men found themselves dancing with men.

Castile found himself in front of a very large Vietnam veteran.

“And he [the Vietnam vet] said to me, `is this what you expected?’ It was quite a relief of tension,” Castile said, chuckling.

Castile learned how everyday gestures are incorporated into dance. “Choreographers do it by watching you and seeing in ordinary conversation what kinds of movements are beautiful and meaningful and will tell something of a story,” he explained.

Castile has been struck by the great community spirit in preparations for the millenium celebration.

“People who never participated in any aspect of celebration here in Eastport are participating and not just in dance,” he remarked. “If you look at the number of people owning or renting homes here in town who’ve gone out of their way to decorate them. … It is a manifestation of a kind of energy that has come here. … It’s really lifted the community.”

New Year’s in Eastport Dec. 31

Family activities including story time and tug-o-war, 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m., behind elementary school.

Community lunch, 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m., $5; supper, 4-7 p.m., $8, at the elementary school.

“A Winter Exhibition,” presented by the Eastport Arts Center and Eastport Gallery, 8 p.m. reception.

Ecumenical Thanksgiving service, 7 p.m., St. Joseph’s Church.

Dedication of new children’s wing and placement of time capsule, 8:30 p.m., Peavey Memorial Library.

Truck parade, 10 p.m.

Festival of Lights and Blessing of the Fleet, 11 p.m. Boat parade from border waters to Eastport. Best boat wins $1,000. Register by Dec. 24 at Moose Island Marine or La Sardina Loca Restaurant. Registration fee of $25 refunded at completion of event.

Midnight 2000 Opening ceremonies, Gov. Angus King, 11 p.m. Fireworks, midnight. Music and dancing, 12:30 a.m., Breakwater Warehouse. Dawn celebration, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and community greet the first light of the new millennium with a procession through the streets of Eastport and a performance on the breakwater.

Jan. 1, 2000 Flyover by U.S. Air Force, 7:30 a.m. First U.S. Golf Tournament of the Millennium, 9 a.m., St. Croix Country Club, Calais. Takes place no matter what the weather. Family activities including icicle toss, frozen fish relay and a bonfire, 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m., behind elementary school. Teeshirts and raffle for Millennium Basket. Buffet and reading of “The Best of Friends” written by Hugh Whitemore and read by Stage East, 6 p.m., Blue Iris Restaurant, $20 by reservation. Winners of decorated homes and businesses to be announced in the Quoddy Tides’ final issue of the century.

For complete details, check out the Eastport Area Chamber of Commerce’s Web site at www.nemaine.com/eastport2000.