JOFFREY BALLET TO LAUNCH ARTS CENTER DANCE SEASON

The Joffrey Ballet will present 13 ballets by nine choreographers during a Sept. 22-27 engagement launching the 1987-88 dance season at the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Segerstrom Hall.

Repertory will includes works by Vaslav Nijinsky, Leonide Massine, Sir Frederick Ashton, Paul Taylor and Gerald Arpino, among others, Arpino announced Wednesday at a news conference in the Costa Mesa center.

“It’s a great joy for us to be opening the season of dance at the center,” said Arpino, associate director of the company that has home bases in New York and Los Angeles.

“The center reinstates what we’ve believed in. It shows another area (in the country) going to the wonderful (art) of dance and shows how we’ve grown as a people, which is the real story of the Joffrey.”

Works scheduled for the run of seven performances will be:

--Sept. 22: “Birthday Variations” (Arpino/Verdi); “L’apres-midi d’un faune” (Nijinksy/Debussy); “Monotones I & II” (Ashton/Satie); “Arden Court” (Taylor/Boyce).

--Sept. 23: “Parade” (Massine/Satie); “Three Preludes” (Stevenson/Rachmaninoff); “La Vivandiere” pas de six (Saint-Leon/Nadaud); “Light Rain” (Arpino/Adams and Gauthier).

--Sept. 24: “Italian Suite” (Arpino/Wolf-Ferrari); “Untitled” (Pilobolus/Dennis); “Altered States” (Kachadurian/Corigliano); “The Clowns” (Arpino/Kay).

--Sept. 25: “La Fille mal garde” (Ashton/Herold-Lanchberry).

--Sept. 26 (matinee and evening): “La Fille mal garde.”

--Sept. 27 (matinee): “La Fille mal garde.”

Casting will be announced before the engagement, Arpino said. “We’re a no-star, all-star company,” Arpino said.

The Orange County Center run will be the final venue of the Joffrey’s nine-city tour, which began in Chicago on March 17 and which was presented at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles in April and May.

The tour has been underwritten by a $200,000 grant from Philip Morris Cos. Inc., which has contributed $750,000 to the company’s touring programs over the past six years.

Thomas R. Kendrick, president of the center, declined Wednesday to comment on the costs of the Costa Mesa appearances.

The Joffrey’s appearances at the center will precede the company’s fall season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, which is slated to open the week of Sept. 28 and run through Oct. 18.

Except for a revival of Nijinksy’s “Le Sacre du printemps,” the repertory for Los Angeles has not been announced. There will be “some differences” from works presented in Orange County, according to a press representative for the company.

Tickets for the Segerstrom Hall run, Kendrick said, will range from $10 to $35 and will go on sale after Sept. 1.

Kendrick said the Joffrey appearances will “double, and perhaps more than double, the amount of dance” presented in the center’s inaugural season of 1986-87. Kendrick declined, however, to discuss other companies that may be part of an expanded season of dance.

The Joffrey last appeared at the center on a program with the Master Chorale of Orange County in October, in James Kadelka’s “Passage” and in Arpino’s “Light Rain.” American Ballet Theatre presented “The Nutcracker” at the center in December.

Arpino said he was approached by the Master Chorale to create a ballet for the Costa Mesa-based organization but that no specific date had been set for its completion.

“I would love to come back (to the Center),” Arpino said. “I hope one day we could have a residency here. But don’t quote me.”

The important thing, however, is for the company to “grow gracefully and with great care in Orange County and not get caught up in the instant,” Arpino said.

After the Wednesday morning news conference, Arpino said he saw no conflicts with appearances scheduled in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

“It should enhance and improve audience attendance,” Arpino said. “I see it as an alliance rather than a competition. It will be very tempting for audiences to have us here.”

Arpino added that he is pleased with the asymmetrical design of Segerstrom Hall.

“For me as a choreographer, if I were working here, it would lend itself to a new combination of elements of design and architecture,” he said.

The advantage for classical ballets, Arpino said, is that “you can open up the stage to enhance the possibilities.”