Dance

What’s in a name?

Quite a bit when it comes to selling tickets for an imported dance event, as the San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts discovered.

“A lot of people here don’t know who Laura Dean is,” said foundation director Diane Annala, “so they were reluctant to buy tickets in advance for the (Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians) concert.”

The picture improved by curtain time on opening night, development director Fred Colby said.

Dean has been the darling of the avant-garde for years, and her cutting-edge choreography is now firmly implanted in the repertory of the Joffrey Ballet Company, among other mainstream dance groups. But despite San Diego’s introduction to Dean’s mesmerizing brand of minimalism in 1983, sold-out houses eluded this maverick of post-modern dance on her return.

The three-piece program that the Dean dancers performed this weekend was a recent sampler, all designed since Dean showed her wares at UC San Diego.

Many of the trappings and trademarks of Dean’s early inventions were still prominent in this program--repetitious use of geometric patterns, ritualistic foot-stomping and bold semaphores that slash through space as the dancers whirl through their dervish-style spins. But “Impact” (1985), the strongest of the three, revealed a broader range of motional patterns and gestures. This highly original work was dazzling in its intricacy.

The San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts knew it faced a challenge when it decided to program lesser-known world-class dance troupes. As Annala explained at the start of the season: “We hope eventually our audiences will trust us--even if they haven’t heard of the artists we book--and realize that we sponsor only top-quality dance.”