Conjuring Up a World Where Images Abound.

''Max,'' a new production by Ohad Naharin, opens in silence on a darkened stage as 10 dancers, five men and five women, are poised with their backs to the audience. The men stand; the women bend in deep plies, tip over -- by dropping a knee to the floor -- and turn in profile, their heads bowed as if in prayer. In this tremendously potent work, there are few obvious displays of emotion, yet ''Max'' is full of imagery that slips between real life and dance in fleeting flashes. Performed by the Batsheva Dance Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday night, ''Max'' produces a formal structure full of breath, as if the air around the dancers and not just the movement, is responsible for shifting the dynamic from mischievous to ominous. At times it's balmy; in other moments it's ice cold. Succinctly and mysteriously, ''Max'' zeros in, just as its press notes say, on the pleasure and pain of being alive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]