DANCE : Ballet Aficionados Have Choice: Home-Grown or Imported

When the San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts began importing world-class dance companies a few years back, several movers and shakers in the community were convinced that the competition would mean the death knell for home-grown dance.

Fortunately, that dire prediction proved false. San Diego stages have been a beehive of dance activity this month, and local dance groups have fared well, even when they shared the limelight with the likes of Nikolais Dance Theatre.

This holiday weekend, local ballet fans have another double bill from which to choose. The National Ballet of Canada moves into the Civic Theatre on Thursday for a four-performance run, and San Diego-based Stage Seven Dance Theatre will perform at City College Theatre.

The Toronto-based National Ballet of Canada hasn’t danced in San Diego since the early 1970s. In fact, this is the troupe’s first American West Coast tour in years. As co-artistic director Valerie Wilder noted in a telephone interview last week: “We’ve changed quite a bit since those days.”

The troupe now features almost twice as many dancers as it did during its debut performance in San Diego, and its repertoire has expanded from the standard full-length classics to a complete palette of ballet offerings. In scope, the National Ballet compares with the top companies of the world. It travels with its own orchestra, which has a nucleus of about 30 musicians, and has elaborate sets and costumes.

For this visit, San Diego will see “a good sampling of the things we do well,” Wilder said, “and a large cross-section of casts.”

Among the ballets in store for San Diego (in two separate programs) is the full-length balletic version of “Onegin”--the only staging of the late John Cranko’s contemporary classic in the repertory of a North American company--and the West Coast premiere of “Alice,” created in 1986 by the highly acclaimed choreographer Glen Tetley.

Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” “Alice” is almost long enough to be presented on its own, but the ballet will be paired with Balanchine’s early masterwork, “The Four Temperaments.”

Opera buffs will note that the music for “Onegin” is not the operatic score. Other changes will be evident as well.

“There’s some little-known Tchaikovsky music especially arranged for the ballet, and the story is stripped down from the poem,” said Wilder. “It’s the same story as the opera, but a bare-bones version. You will see Veronica Tennant, one of our major ballerinas for years, dancing in one performance, and then we’ll have a brand-new ballerina, Gizella Witkowsky, in the role the next night.”

“Onegin” will be danced Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., and “Alice” and “The Four Temperaments” will finish off the run Saturday, with performances at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Stage Seven Dance Theatre, having withstood another changing of the guard, is ready to show its wares at City College on Friday and Saturday, apparently undaunted by the nearby presence of the National Ballet of Canada.

Kathryn Irey, who assumed the artistic reins just a few months ago, has programmed five styles of dance--Romantic, classical and neoclassical ballet and contemporary and jazz--for the concert.

“It’s going to be a challenging program,” she said. “We want to stretch ourselves and stretch our audiences. We’re presenting some new works and styles we’ve never done before, like the romantic ballet. That’s absolutely new for us, and we’re hoping the excitement we feel will carry to the audience.”

Former California Ballet dancer Paul Koverman, now of the Phoenix School of Ballet, was commissioned to choreograph a work for the company. Although the dance was juxtaposed with “String Quartet 3: Some Aspects of Peltoniemi Hintrik’s Funeral March,” the dance will not be performed at a funereal pace. Koverman has quickened the tempo of Sallinen’s music, and even added a touch of post-modernism to his designs.

Stage Seven has commissioned a new work from San Francisco Jazz Dance Company’s Deborah Adams as well. This lyrical jazz piece, with the lengthy title “I Laid on My Back and Watched the Moon Chase the Sun,” is set to the music of Keith Jarrett.

Also on the agenda for this mixed bag are excerpts from “Giselle,” including three rustic variations from Act I that are rarely danced; the pas de deux from “Corsaire”; and a reprise of “Concerti,” choreographed by Elizabeth Rowe-Wistrich.