ALLIANCE’S 3-CONCERT POTPOURRI SPREADS DANCE GOSPEL

The San Diego Area Dance Alliance has a new president, a new focus and a new format for this year’s concert to spread the gospel of local dance.

Nancy McCaleb, a highly acclaimed dancer/choreographer affiliated with Three’s Company, has assumed the reins of the 5-year-old organization from founding member Jean Isaacs. And her first official duty was to plan the three-concert marathon to celebrate dance. The performances will be at San Diego State University’s Main Stage Theater at 8 p.m. today and Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday.

“I guess it’s a new beginning for us,” McCaleb said over lunch recently. “After Jean (Isaacs) left, we had to grow up. She was like a mother to us all, but now we have Lani Donohoe as our executive director and a lot more people playing an active role in the Dance Alliance.”

Dance Alliance concerts have been criticized for the uneven quality of the dancing, poor production values and helter-skelter organization. As chairwoman for this festival, McCaleb is sensitive to the problems that have given alliance concerts a bad name.

“I thought about these criticisms,” she said, “and we’ve made a lot of changes this year. We’ve really focused on the technical aspects of presenting 17 pieces. We have Lori Rubenstein as lighting designer for the concerts. I’m thrilled because it will take a magician to light this--and Lori is just the one to do it. There also will be people working back stage to coordinate the program and avoid dead spots between pieces.

“We’ve also made changes in the programming format. We have a wider variety, and we’ve set up the concerts so that Friday night will be mostly modern, capped off by an ethnic work (a Spanish ballet). Saturday evening, the accent will be on ballet and jazz. The matinee will feature the best of both nights, plus a Hawaiian dance troupe, the Pualani Dancers (newcomers to the alliance and to San Diego).”

Although McCaleb has a list of improvements she hopes to implement during her tenure with the alliance, her top priorities are providing local dancers and choreographers with a place to show their work and offering aficionados a chance to see the full diversity of dance expressions available in the San Diego are.

“This year we had a record number of 50 dances to choose from during the auditions. We spent a whole weekend adjudicating and came away very excited about the quality and range of dances. The program will be very strong.

“These dance festivals are very important because it’s so hard for dancers--especially new artists, young artists--to get a place to show their work. Dance is the hardest, most cost ineffective, of the art forms.”

The potpourri this weekend will feature most of the familiar faces dance enthusiasts expect to see, but it will also hold some surprises. The debut of the Hawaiian Pualani Dancers is one of the highlights. Not only will this performance mark the first time traditional Hawaiian dance will be included in an alliance concert, but it also will be a rare opportunity to see 15th- and 18th-Century styles--including the classic hula (not the tourist variety we’ve come to associate with the Hawaiian hula).

“We have a new ethnic dancer, Esmeralda Enrique, and she’s wonderful,” McCaleb said (Enrique was formerly a principal in one of Spain’s leading dance companies). “She’ll be doing a classic Spanish dance never performed here. And there’s a new jazz dancer named Angela Blackledge who comes from a movie and TV background. She designed her own solo. And Cate Bell (an independent modern dancer/choreographer) made a post-modern piece with relaxed arms--a real fun piece for five dancers.”

Three’s Company’s “Tower of Mothers” will make a serious statement and Pat Sandback will collaborate with percussionist Jon Szanto on “Stain.”

Chris Aguilar (a former Jazz Unlimited dancer who recently formed his own jazz troupe) created an all-male piece. “We have so few all-male works that we really wanted a man’s dance,” McCaleb said. “Chris said he wasn’t really ready to show us one (at the auditions), but he must have worked all night, because the next day--just before we closed up shop--there he was with ‘Possession,’ a powerful dance for six men.”

Margaret Marshall describes her modern jazz work, “Facets,” as “a persuasive conversation between four parts of one personality,” and Melissa Nunn returns to the spotlight with “Ways of Holding On.” Jazz Unlimited will let loose with its crowd-pleasing “Za Za’s,” and Jay Miller will bring his brand of mime dance to the festival for the first time.

Mieczyslaw Morawski will contribute two works to this year’s mixed bag. “Rex,” a solo originally designed for Marta Jiacoletti, will be danced by Kate Harrison, and the neoclassic ensemble work “Scarlatti No. 1” will be performed by the American Ballet Ensemble. Also on tap for ballet buffs are excerpts from Act III of the California Ballet’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” a pas de deux choreographed by Judith Sharp (of Ballet Society) and Black Mountain Dance Centre’s “Corsaire Pas de Deux.”

Absent due to scheduling conflicts are the exotic dancers of the Samahan Philippine Dance Company--show stoppers at past performances--and any sign of tap dancers (none showed up for the auditions). But this three-part smorgasbord presents the cream of the local crop culled from a broad spectrum of San Diego dance.