THE 1987 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Greg Louganis, the Dancer : Pan Am Champion Dives Into Artistic Project With His Usual Determination

In an old frame building just north of downtown, Greg Louganis was rehearsing a new dance routine. He stood among the other dancers on the hardwood floor, facing a wall of mirrors, as he waited for the music to begin.

He looked nervous. His face glistened with sweat in the sunlight pouring in from the huge windows in the high-ceilinged hall.

But why?

What’s a little dance routine to a man who can fly and flip and twist and turn as he does in a 10-meter free fall off a diving platform?

It’s a performance. Just as a dive is a performance. Or a press conference is a performance. Or every minute of his life is a performance.

Louganis is a perfectionist. When he performs, he’s looking for a 10. At the very least a 9.5.

So why not stick to the springboard and the platform? As a diver, he’s the best in the world. No contest. Has been for years. He swept the Olympic gold in ’84 and will again in ’88. Just last week he won two more Pan Am gold medals. He swept the Pan Am gold in 1979, too. And 1983.

Maybe that’s why. Dance is a challenge.

Jim Babbitt, his best friend, former roommate and personal manager, explains Louganis’ professional dance debut with Indianapolis’ Dance Kaleidoscope as one of several career-building opportunities. As Babbitt put it, “Greg now has three months to make a living before he goes back into serious training for the Olympics.”

But the set of his jaw, the concentration in his eyes, the tensing as he heard the first beats of the music said that this is more than just a job to Louganis.

In perfect sync with the professional dancers around him, Louganis stepped precisely, cocked his head just so, and worked his way through the demanding jazz routine. At several junctures, Louganis dominated the number with powerful ballet-type leaps and spins.

The company was, after all, rehearsing for a performance at the Indiana Repertory Theater Oct. 21-25 that features Louganis as a guest artist.

The other dancers wore leotards for the workout but Louganis stood apart in his bright turquoise and black bicycle shorts and bulky turquoise socks.

But Louganis went bounding from one end of the hall to the other, flying through the air, lifting women over his head, looking very much a dancer.

Perfection? Not yet. Maybe a 7.5. Or 8.0.

But Louganis can dance.

Michael Owens, the choreographer brought in from New York to fit this performance to Louganis’ strengths, admitted that he was surprised.

He had known that Louganis was a superior athlete, a world champion. He had known that Louganis made his first appearance as a dancer at the age of 3, in top hat and tails, and that he had studied dance seriously for many years, finally making dance his minor at UC Irvine when he got his degree in drama.

But to be able to present this number after just three days with the company?

“It’s very impressive that he has picked this up so well in this amount of time,” Owens said. “As you can see, he has the strength to get up in the air so high, he just floats up there. He’s so strong. But I was surprised at the grace, the rhythm, the feel he has for the performance--I guess that came from his drama background.

“I thought it would be much more difficult for him to get the subtleties.

“I just wish I could get him to relax a little bit more. He’s working so hard and he’s trying so hard, he can’t relax. But that will happen with time.”

The similarities between diving and dance are many--even to the extent that Owens noticed Louganis spotting the water during somersaults and twists to keep from getting lost in his dives the way a dancer picks a spot for eye contact to keep from getting lost in a pirouette.

Louganis has become a world champion diver by adding his grace and elegance and stage presence to his athletic ability, and he’s promising to amaze patrons of the arts by bringing his power to the stage.

He wants desperately to be taken seriously in this endeavor. It’s not a publicity stunt--although when reporters were invited to a rehearsal it turned into an exhibition.

He seems quite sincere when he expresses his respect for the professional dancers he’s working with. He’s taking the role of student here, not star.

Ginger Hall, artistic director of Dance Kaleidoscope said: “The transition has been made very easy because of Greg’s attitude. He is such an open, humble person.”

At other junctures in his life, Louganis has been perceived as aloof, untouchable. He can seem, on the platform, to be the epitome of pride and confidence, or, in the recounting of his childhood, a lonely “seething mess.” That’s how he has put it.

He was born in San Diego to a couple of teen-agers who gave him up for adoption when he was 9 months old. He knows that his natural father was a Samoan who had some athletic ability.

He was adopted by a tuna fisherman and his wife and he was raised in El Cajon. He had a natural ability for dancing--he used to mimic what he saw in his older sister’s dance classes--as well as gymnastics and diving. But he was a terrible student. He didn’t find out until he was 18 that he had dyslexia, a reading disorder, and he was thrilled to find out that he was not retarded.

At one point he was called “nigger” by the other kids because of his darker skin.

As he struggled to be accepted, he also struggled with alcoholism--which he now says is behind him. He struggled with personal relationships and now regards just a couple of people as friends.

Only when he was diving, or concentrating on acting or dance, could he really feel in control.

All in all, Louganis is an enigma, an evolving personality.

At this stage, he is bracing for the adjustments he’ll have to make when, finally, he retires from diving.

Of course he’ll compete through the Olympics in 1988, and he insists upon talking about international events after 1988, “So that I won’t have the pressure in Seoul that it’s my last meet,” he said.

At 27, he is still strong and fit, although his hair is graying. He likes to remind us that Sammy Lee, one of the great divers of all time, competed longer and won a gold medal at the Olympics when he was 32.

Louganis at one time trained with Lee and says he still receives timely motivational letters.

Still, Louganis knows that the end of his amateur athletic career is near, and since there is no way to make a professional career of diving, he has to learn to use his name and reputation to make the most of endorsements and appearances and to launch him into a second career. He wants to develop his dancing and his acting.

Babbitt has him booked for several appearances in the next few months. He’ll be making a couple of commercials. There are a couple of movie deals in the making.

Louganis lets Babbitt handle all of that.

For Louganis, the task at hand is proving himself on the stage. For a real audience. To earn the money that GTE has put up to sponsor him in this endeavor.

“It’s important that I perform well,” Louganis said. “It’s very important to me for people to see me in another light, as more than just a diver.

“When I perform as a diver, I gets 9s and 10s, and people expect that from me. When they see me on the stage, what will they expect? That’s a lot of pressure.

“That’s why I admire so much an artist like Angela Lansbury or Ben Vereen. They have been able to go from stage to screen to television. They are so talented.

“I know it’s late in my career to become a professional dancer. These people have been doing it every day for years. I’m not at that level. But I love dancing.”

And he’ll be ready to put this act on the stage Oct. 21?

“Oh, my God, I hope so,” Lou ganis said.