DANCER COMES HOME, BRINGS COMPANY

When Melissa Allen came home to Yorba Linda this week, she brought a dance company with her.

At 19, Allen is a four-year veteran of American Ballet Theatre. Like other young members of the renowned New York company, she has held some small roles with ABT but mostly has danced in disciplined anonymity as part of the corps de ballet.

But this summer, during ABT’s off season, Allen decided to showcase her talents and those of six other ABT dancers and create her own company, the Emerson Dance Theatre.

The troupe will debut today through Sunday at the Forum Theatre in Yorba Linda with a repertory that includes jazz dance as well as selections from ballet classics such as “Swan Lake” and “Sleeping Beauty.”

As her dancers rehearsed in sweat shirts and leg warmers on the bare, slippery stage of the Forum Theatre, artistic director Allen explained that she wants to bring ballet to smaller communities that have rarely seen a professional dance troupe.

“New York knows ballet but here they don’t know what classical ballet is,” said Allen, whose ballet training in Fullerton and Los Angeles schools began when she was 6. “We’re here to help generate the interest.”

As part of that effort, Emerson’s dancers plan to remain on stage after each performance to answer questions from the audience. In a related educational effort, Allen took her toe shoes to two Yorba Linda grade school classes Tuesday and spoke to the children about dance.

Her fledgling troupe takes its name from essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose writing Allen and her father have admired.

“When I put the group together, the name seemed to fit,” she said. “Emerson wrote about individualism and standing out, not being afraid to try the outlandish, the impossible.”

For their efforts this weekend, dancers will not be paid a salary. Rather, said Emerson Dance Theatre producer Robert Lippert, performers will be paid “from funds remaining after expenses are met.” The cost of putting on the Yorba Linda dates is about $20,000. That figure includes the cost of air fare, housing and publicity, Lippert added.

Each dancer in the troupe was allowed to select three works to perform--works usually out of bounds to corps members at ABT.

“ABT demands the caliber of dance to be so high that when a dancer is in the corps, he or she never gets a chance to do some roles,” said Allen, who will be performing the demanding “Black Swan” pas de deux from “Swan Lake.”

“This gives you a chance to do technically difficult things you don’t get the chance to do” with ABT, added John Summers, a 21-year-old dancer who will perform a pas de deux from George Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes.”

His partner, 24-year-old Harriet Clark, agreed. “(At ABT) we dance every night on stage but it’s not necessarily the step-out type of thing. This gives us a chance to kick up our heels.”

The Emerson Dance Theatre’s performances this weekend are to be the company’s only ones this year; once ABT’s regular season starts up again Aug. 12, most of these dancers go back to the corps de ballet. But Allen vows that her company will again hit the road when ABT’s season is over. Stops, she says, will include Union Springs, Ala., the home of one dance member, and, of course, Yorba Linda.

Emerson Dance Theatre performs at 8 tonight and Saturday, and at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.