TUSTIN DANCE TROUPE TO APPEAR AT ARTS CENTER

While local balletomanes cheer ballerina Cynthia Gregory and friends tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, a modest, home-grown troupe will make the first appearance by a local dance group in the Costa Mesa facility’s smaller black-box theater.

But Dance Kaleidoscope and Gregory, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, won’t be competing for the same audience, says Susie Vanderlip, business manager for the Tustin-based troupe.

“We’re geared to bringing dance to people not used to seeing dance,” Vanderlip said in an interview. “We work to take a general audience and entertain them and take them just a few steps beyond their normal experience--but not to make them uncomfortable.

“We want them to come back, not to be scared off.”

A jazz and modern dance company, Dance Kaleidoscope was founded with six dancers in 1975 by Jeannine Englehart, who was teaching at Orange Coast College. Since then, it has grown to its present strength of 17 dancers, ranging in age from 20 to 36.

“We’re somewhat of a mix of students and graduates from dance programs at Cal State Long Beach, UCI and UCLA,” Vanderlip said. “Several of us teach for Coastline Community College. But every dancer is required to take classes.”

The company’s repertory, according to Vanderlip, is “very eclectic.”

“Certain (company) members like to choreograph, and we’ve also commissioned works from local as well as from Hollywood and Broadway professionals.”

Among the latter, Vanderlip named Bill Hastings, Doug Caldwell and Fred Walton.

The company’s programs in the center’s 300-seat Founders Hall--at 8 tonight and on Friday--will consist of relatively short works set to music ranging from Bach to Streisand, Kraftwerk and Shadowfax.

“It’s an extremely varied show,” Vanderlip said. “Some works are very modern, some classical; some are confrontive, and some are playful.”

A member of the company since its beginning, Vanderlip credits its 12-year-long survival to “an esprit de corps that is really very special.

“We’ve picked dancers with excellent technique, but also with loving, supportive personalities.”

And lots of work:

Members not only dance but also pool their backgrounds in marketing, design, costuming and publicity. They have never been paid.

“If we were paid for what we do, we would need a budget of $150,000,” Vanderlip laughed. “We survive on a budget of about $10,000 year. But that doesn’t mean that we can do this in the future. We are growing, and so are our demands.”

The company gives approximately 30 concerts a year, appearing in local high schools and at such events such as the Costa Mesa Arts on the Green festival (for the past three years), the Newport Beach Salute to the Arts and summer programs in Anaheim and Tustin.

The City of Tustin has given the company free rehearsal space for seven years. TRW Informational Services in Orange recently has become a strong supporter. The company also has toured various military bases in Southern California over the last two years as part of the Bob Hope Hollywood USO mobile show unit.

The troupe’s appearances at the black-box theater and rehearsal hall make it the first local dance group to perform at a Center facility, but it will have to pay for the honor.

“The Center did not give us the facility for free,” Vanderlip said. Costs for two nights, she said, will total approximately $8,000, “‘which is quite a bit for a local company.”

But she said that John O’Donnell, an area developer and president of the South Coast Repertory board of trustees, “gave us a matching grant of $4,000. And we raised the (rest of the) money.”

Still, she feels that the Center has been morally and professionally supportive.

“Orange County is just beginning to become aware of dance as a result of the Center opening. But that (awareness) is primarily (for) ballet. Most people don’t know that modern and jazz dance are legitimate art forms, which is why we want to focus on the general public.

“Dance is an art that is totally in the now,” she concluded. “It’s not like music, which you can record and play back later. It’s very experiential, yet it has been a spiritual vehicle for thousands of years.”