NYC BALLET TO PLAY ORANGE COUNTY

New York City Ballet, in its first West Coast tour since 1974, is scheduled to perform the week of Oct. 13 in the new Orange County Performing Arts Center as part of a three-city tour, City Ballet officials have confirmed.

“We have the money. We have the dates. It (the tour) is definitely on,” said Barbara Horgan, NYCB special projects administrator.

However, Thomas Kendrick, the Orange County center’s executive director, would not confirm the engagement.

“We are still negotiating and are still very interested since this is the company’s (NYCB’s) first tour here in more than a decade, and it would be an Orange County exclusive,” he said. “But nothing has been signed.”

The New York City Ballet’s tour is scheduled to open Sept. 30 in Berkeley for a one-week run at the Zellerbach Auditorium on the UC campus, NYCB press officer Leslie Bailey said late last week. The Pacific Northwest Ballet Assn. is expected to present the company Oct. 8-11 at the Seattle Center Opera House. The Costa Mesa engagement would close the tour. Bailey said there are no plans to perform in Los Angeles or any additional cities.

The dates for the Orange County engagement, as well as details about repertory, are to be formally announced early next month, said Bailey.

“Contracts aren’t signed yet. This a preliminary announcement. . . The program hasn’t been set, but we expect to have all this by next month,” she added.

An engagement of New York City Ballet--widely considered the premier American company--would be a coup for the Orange County center. Led by founding artistic director George Balanchine, NYCB last played in Southern California in August, 1974, at the Greek Theatre in Hollywood.

Since Balanchine’s death in 1983, the New York company has been led by dancer-choreographer Peter Martins, a principal dancer since 1967. (Martins shares the title of ballet master-in-chief with choreographer Jerome Robbins.) The company usually has a home season of about 20 weeks, starting in November, at the New York State Theatre, Lincoln Center.

Programs, soloists and touring costs have not yet been disclosed for the tour. But Horgan said that, based on the company’s 1985-86 budget, touring costs for the full company, orchestra and technical crew--about 185-200 people--total about $625,000 a week.

Finding underwriters for the tour had been the crucial factor in negotiations with individual presenters, NYCB aides said. Other locales considered earlier--but since dropped from the 1986 tour--included Denver, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.