COMMENTARY : THOUGHTS ON THE DEMISE OF A BALLET COMPANY

It is official now. The Los Angeles Ballet, $400,000 in the red, has been dissolved.

At least it has been dissolved in its present guise, for the time being. The hopeful qualifier does not come from the board of directors or from the bankruptcy lawyer retained by the board. It comes from the dauntless dancer-choreographer-impresario who, for most practical purposes, was the Los Angeles Ballet during its vicissitudinous decade.

It comes from John Clifford.

Clifford thinks that maybe, just maybe, he will be able to refashion an ensemble that could rise someday soon from the ashes of the Los Angeles Ballet. All it would take, he says, is a more sympathetic board, a more sympathetic press and lots of money. The talent is here.

He is right about the talent. Los Angeles has never lacked good, young dancers. Los Angeles has never lacked good dance teachers. The city of reluctant angels has, however, lacked appropriate professional outlets. The city continued to lack them even after Clifford and his brave little band laid their resident claim.

Los Angeles always has been generous with promises, stingy with support. It is easy to blame the most recent debacle on overambition, social mismanagement, civic disinterest, public delusions of balletic grandeur and, yes, on critics reluctant to function as cheerleaders or extensions of the Chamber of Commerce.

It shouldn’t be easy. Cool appraisal of the few fortunes and many misfortunes of the Los Angeles Ballet would have to suggest that the troubles began at the top. With John Clifford.

When he returned to his home town 10 years ago, he was one of the bright hopes of the New York City Ballet. He was a dancer of remarkable vivacity and impish charm, a choreographer with little experience but lots of ideas--not all of them original. Most important, perhaps, he had never run a company.

His greatest asset, from the start, seemed to be his enthusiasm. It was, to a degree, infectious. He was able to rally excellent dancers, most of them female, to his side. He brought with him some useful Balanchine ballets and some vaunted Balanchine blessings. At a time when his show, however threadbare, was the only show of its kind in town, he was able to secure funds from an ever-changing parade of donors.

The beginnings were, by necessity, modest. They also were, by necessity, idealistic. They may not, however, have been realistic.

From the start, Clifford’s repertory consisted of hand-me-down Balanchine (the real thing, reproduced with more optimism than fidelity) and imitation Balanchine (Clifford ballets in the Balanchine manner). When the need for expansion became obvious, Clifford, who is nothing if not facile, started cranking out trendy chameleon vehicles. He gave us rock ballets, raga ballets, ragtime ballets, nude ballets, jazz ballets, Vegas ballets. He gave us ersatz-Ashton, mock-Bejart, recycled Robbins.

He also gave us constant revivals of two of his most successful pieces, the eloquent “Fantasies” (1969) and the clever “Poeme Electronique” (1973).

He attempted full-length ballets against the odds: a clumsy “Cinderella,” a “Coppelia” brightened fitfully by Alexandra Danilova’s coaching, a “Nutcracker” that at least could please the kiddies at Christmastime.

In the long run, he did not give his dancers or his audience much exposure to challenging works by outside choreographers. When asked why, he pleaded poverty.

The plea bore the ring of truth. It also explained the frequent shift in both administrative and artistic personnel, the often amateurish performing conditions, the endless cancellations and postponements, the long waits between seasons, the inevitable technical mishaps, the dubious solutions to housing problems, the unkept promises, the absence of growth, and the sometimes unholy alliances with guest stars of disparate distinction.

The plea of poverty did not explain Clifford’s lapses in managerial judgment or his lapses in taste.

The coup de grace for the Los Angeles Ballet probably was fired by the Music Center. It didn’t want Clifford’s ensemble to be the long-awaited and long-needed official ballet company in our cultural shopping mall. The Music Center wanted the bigger, better, more seasoned, more versatile Joffrey Ballet of New York. At this juncture, Joffrey may be genuinely bicoastal only on paper. Unlike Clifford, however, Joffrey is in a position to capture the allegiance of our glamour-oriented arts Establishment.

Los Angeles apparently is not willing to sustain two ballet companies, especially if one is patently inferior to the other.

Clifford thinks matters might have been different if he had enjoyed a happier relationship with the Los Angeles press in general, with this ogre in particular. But his press has been bad at worst, uneven at best, in other locales, too.

Some New York critics, surveying one or two of his best bills under optimum tour conditions, offered encouragement. Others deplored Clifford’s vapidity and vulgarity. The impressions gained by playing host to a company once or twice a decade, in any case, cannot be equated with the impressions gained by living with a company for a decade.

If negative reviews killed the Los Angeles Ballet, that is regrettable. The alarming alternative to negative reviews, unfortunately, would have been dishonest reviews.

To our knowledge, artistic excellence has never been achieved by praising mediocrity and mismanagement. A newspaper should do what it can to stimulate interest in potentially rewarding events. Over the years, The Times has printed countless interviews and feature articles related to Los Angeles Ballet activities. Once the curtain went up, however, there could be no excuses and no double standards.

We always felt Los Angeles needs a ballet company and deserves the best. We still feel that way. Contrary to some impressions, we live in a huge, rich, sophisticated city. Unfortunately, Clifford did not convince us that he could give us the sort of ballet company we need and deserve.

There can be no question that Clifford would have been an asset to any company. He was a compelling dancer. His energy seems unlimited. His choreographic skills are worth cultivating under the watchful eye of a discerning artistic boss. He seems to inspire rare loyalty from those who share his vision. He has been generous to Los Angeles, even when Los Angeles has not been generous to him.

Still, being an asset to a company is not the same as being the right leader for a company, especially if the company in question wants to flourish in the unpredictable, fussy, spoiled yet deprived center of Southern California. The surprise isn’t that Clifford’s company succumbed to conditions partly beyond his control. The surprise is that it survived as long as it did.

The Los Angeles Ballet is dead. Long live Los Angeles ballet.