DANCE : TO THINE OWN SELF--AND BALANCHINE--BE TRUE

He stands absent-mindedly munching a sandwich while chatting with his dancers in the lobby of their downtown hotel. The picture is homogeneous: Peter Martins, clad in tennis togs like some of the others, is an equal among equals--except for his move-over-Robert-Redford looks.

Ah, but pictures don’t tell all.

It has been nearly three trial-by-fire years since the tall, blond Dane gave up a prime stage career to face the daunting challenge, with Jerome Robbins, of succeeding the late George Balanchine at the helm of New York City Ballet. And yet he has not lost his youthful, dancerly stance, his casual chic, his Adonis appeal.

At 40, Martins in no way suggests the authoritative paterfamilias that was Balanchine.

In his modest suite a few minutes later, the director sits down with a can of Diet Coke, which he has pulled unceremoniously from a paper bag while searching about for his cigarettes and a small red lighter. He sports a month-old beard of sandy color and short wavy locks, cut in a fashionable fly-away style. The phone begins ringing with what will constitute regularity over the next hour.

“My God, it’s a circus here,” he says, running to quiet the noisy instrument and mocking the importance it ascribes to him.

The truth is, however, that he sits on the throne of what many regard as the land’s most glittering ballet company. Moreover, this ensemble rarely gets transported away from the State Theatre at Lincoln Center--where it plays an unparalleled 25 weeks per year, in addition to a four-week summer season in Saratoga, N.Y.

Now, after a 12-year absence from California, City Ballet returns to the West Coast--appearing at the Orange County Performing Arts Center for a five-day run starting Wednesday.

“What audiences will be seeing,” says Martins, “is the proud effort we’ve all put in to date. Let’s call it the keeping-things-intact era. Naturally, the Balanchine presence is very strong. His ballets? That’s what we breathe. And his language? That’s what we speak.

“I wouldn’t have accepted the job if I didn’t have enormous admiration for him. On the other hand, he’s lucky that I do.”

Martins is talking about his subordinated ego and how it slows the inevitable changes the company must go through in order to remain artistically vital. As Balanchine did before him, he thinks of the classical ballet in this century not as a museum where time stands still but as a progressive entity.

“The big question we face,” he says, leaning forward and turning his palms up as if to catch the answer, “is where will the company be in five years? What will be the ratio (of Balanchine to Robbins to Martins ballets)? What kind of balance will I create? And where do I fit in?”

The answers, as far as his own choreographic ambitions go, can be fished from Martins’ pocket. Besides what he does at City Ballet, there are his musical-comedy efforts (“Song and Dance” and “On Your Toes” on Broadway and a recent Washington staging of “Carousel”). He likens this work to “lunch in jeans,” as opposed to ballet’s “black-tie dinner.”

When he began making dances--many of Balanchine’s principal men did that but, curiously, no women in the company ever followed suit--he reported “a passion” for the creative experience.

“I still have that passion,” he admits. “But it’s different. It’s the difference between falling in love and loving. One is a joy ride, an impossible ideal. The other involves grappling with real problems and taking on responsibility. It touches the deeper emotions. It brings out the insecurities, but it gives back something ongoing and substantial.”

The only Martins ballet scheduled for Orange County is “Songs of the Auvergne.” He says one can find in it the three primary virtues he always strives for: coherent structure, musical truth and a reflection of the particular dancer’s profile.

Beyond that, its pastoral flavor and family narrative suggest “my vision of a loving community,” and, he adds, “an antidote to life in New York. It is a love song to Heather (Watts, the ballerina for whom it was created) and . . . I know this sounds corny . . . to people who care about each other and to children and to the tenderness they invoke.”

When the institutional organization to continue Balanchine’s legacy at New York City Ballet was put in place, Martins and Robbins were named co-ballet masters in chief. Although the titles seem equal, the job of conducting day-to-day business falls to Martins.

“Jerry is concerned with matters of general policy and welfare, as well as his own ballets,” Martins says. “But the bulk of responsibility is mine. As for Lincoln Kirstein (co-founder of the company with Balanchine and its general director), he’s the godfather. We discuss everything with him and he follows things, but he is primarily devoted to the School of American Ballet.”

In effect, Martins says he is trying to do everything his mentor did: create, instruct, rehearse, observe and “fix.” The fixing is what he does two or three times a week in company class “after watching performances and studying the problems encountered in different ballets,” he says.

“I’m not an educator, though. The dancers are already highly schooled--they are superb, they go beyond what anyone could still teach. I find myself carrying out the same function here that Balanchine did.”

Yet, Martins refrains from commenting on how his own class style differs from the Balanchine personality that brought him temporarily to grief, according to his autobiography, “Far from Denmark.”

In fact, he nearly bites his tongue answering how he hopes to find his artistic identity as head of another’s shrine.

“You can understand,” he says, “how what I’m doing could be called the suicide of the century.

“Trying to be true to both Balanchine and myself is impossible. Knowing where he ends and I begin takes a higher power to figure out. If I ever left the company, though, it wouldn’t be for this reason. It would simply involve (the decision to pursue) other interests.”

Balanchine bequeathed more than 200 ballets to the company. For Martins to find his own choreographic way amid the vast oeuvre of a visionary is just one aspect of his burden. Another has to do with the struggle for flexibility within the complex system.

Martins, who has no qualms about naming the difficulties, complains that the company resists change. “It is a solid, earthbound institution,” he says, “rigid through hugeness. Its roots are so firmly planted that they won’t budge. I do not want to pull these roots out, but it would be nice to find a little give here and there.”

By way of example, he cites the 87% to 92% subscription sales at the State Theatre, making City Ballet among the most habitual pastimes of New Yorkers. Ordinarily, such solid box-office figures would be a director’s dream. But Martins says he turns himself inside out trying to produce artistically viable programs that do not repeat themselves on a single series.

“I can’t do it,” he confesses. “A computer couldn’t do it. So we compromise. The programs are not ideal. But the subscribers see everything without duplication.

“Compared to this job, which has countless things I just can’t fix because they’re all interdependent on larger issues, being a dancer was a luxury. One body to take care of, to get to class, to rehearse. In fact, I have a greater appreciation for the pleasures of dancing now that I’m done with it than I did during my career.”

Typically, Martins gave himself only modest credit throughout the decade of his limelight at City Ballet--having admitted that he danced because he “did it well but was never comfortable performing, in fact, hated it mostly.”

Nevertheless, those performances were lauded for their technical precision, courtly elegance and peerless partnering.

Now Martins exults in his company, which includes among its members his 19-year-old son.

Asked about the coincidence between his stewardship and the rise in male-dancer power over the past several years, Martins starts to speak, then stops.

“My inclination is to quote Balanchine,” he finally admits. “And I guess that if creating my own image were important enough, I wouldn’t quote him. But I’m going to, because it doesn’t matter. And because he left so many terrific quotes. His answer would be: ‘Like wine, there are some good years and some bad years. It’s the same with dancers.’ ”

But the issue of whether Balanchine practiced discrimination against men in his avowal that “ballet is woman” does not go away by references to vintner’s luck. In her recently published memoirs, “Dancing on My Grave” (reviewed by Martin Bernheimer in today’s Book Section), Gelsey Kirkland contends that Martins was given increasingly simplified variations in his “Diamonds” solos as proof that Balanchine tried to deprive male dancers of their brilliance.

“Not true,” says Martins. “George used to stand in the wings and scold me for not doing all the steps. It was my choice and I did it because I was tired and lazy. Because, after dancing sometimes 13 times a week, there was no more energy.”

As for the book itself, Martins denies having read it--even though his own romance with Kirkland is discussed.

“It (the autobiography) makes no difference to me,” he says. “She must have needed the money badly. I think it’s quite sad.” He also disputes some other contentions Kirkland makes about the Balanchine aesthetic, namely, that in following the “pure dance” principle, in emphasizing speed, clarity and sharpness of attack, the choreographer stripped dramatic character from his ballets.

“He always urged dancers not to be zombies,” Martins explains. “He loved personality. But he didn’t want prima donnas and self-indulgence.” Practically in the same breath, however, the new director asserts that he’s “permitting more characterization.

“I’m a different generation, a different person.”

Until now, City Ballet has largely avoided pop ballets, and Martins says he will continue to dedicate the company to its fine-arts standard.

“But we’re at a crossroads now,” he admits. “It’s no secret that I would like to be a little more daring, that I thrive on creative people like William Forsythe, Laura Dean and Robert Wilson. Some of our critics may not like it but they’ll have to get ready for our next era. They might be in for a shock.”