DANCE : USIU Troupe Strives for New Heights

Canned music is par for the course at local dance concerts, even for University-based companies. But when United States International University’s International Ballet performs its spring concert this week, a 45-piece orchestra will provide live accompaniment from the pit.

“That was part of the new concept when I took over,” said artistic director Steven Wistrich, former chairman of the dance division at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.

“We’ll perform three concerts a season with conductor Zoltan Rozsnyai and the USIU orchestra,” he said. “For this program, we’re even using 15 singers from USIU’s International Chorale.”

The troupe will perform Thursday and Friday in its East County Performing Arts Center debut.

Wistrich’s crusade to upgrade the quality of USIU dance concerts extends well beyond the addition of live music. It includes beefing up the roster of dancers and finding new venues for showcasing the cream of the crop in the university-sponsored ensemble.

“Our own Old Town Theatre is just too small, so I’m trying to find more suitable space for ourselves that is also affordable,” Wistrich said. “Moving to ECPAC is a big jump for us, and it should show us off in a much better light.”

According to Wistrich, audiences can expect about the same level of technical assurance from this student group as is typically delivered by San Diego’s home-grown dance troupes--despite the absence of professional guest artists.

“I’ve made several recruiting trips around the country this year to attract students, and I’m very pleased with the progress,” he said. “We’re definitely getting better students, and they’re getting better as the year goes on.

“Some of the dancers in this performance are brand-new this quarter. They won’t even be enrolled at the school until the fall semester, but they’re performing in this concert.”

The emphasis on enticing new talent to USIU’s dance program has been a priority for Wistrich since he assumed the reins in September, 1987. And apparently the effort is starting to pay off.

And Wistrich and his wife, Elizabeth Rowe Wistrich, resident choreographer and member of the university’s dance faculty, have another tactic working for them.

“We try to challenge the dancers, but we tailor the choreography specifically for them so they won’t be doing anything they can’t handle,” he said.

The 20-member troupe, culled from both the graduate and undergraduate schools, will dance two classical works staged by Elizabeth Wistrich, and a new jazz piece choreographed by one of USIU’s graduate students, James Kelly.

The most ambitious work is Elizabeth Wistrich’s one-act adaptation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” danced to Mendelssohn’s music.

Although “Dream” is usually staged as a full-length ballet, Wistrich has condensed the scenario and the score to create “a distillation of the Shakespearean play,” with an emphasis on theatricality. Four actors from the University’s drama program will join the dancers to heighten the dramatic possibilities in this staging.

The USIU Chorale has been tagged to sing with the orchestra, and elaborate scenery, originally built for the Santa Barbara Ballet, will be trucked in to add a professional polish to the production.

Also on tap for the ECPAC debut is Elizabeth Wistrich’s version of the “Raymonda Variations,” set to a mosaic of music by Alexander Glazunov. The exuberant dance work abounds with classical Hungarian-style phrasing. But don’t expect the familiar Petipa choreography. Once again, the accent will be on lavish production values, with authentic tutus borrowed from Ballet West.

The unlikely blend of Beethoven and Bob James gives aural impetus to “Beethoven, Bob and the Boys,” a jazz dance that completes the ECPAC program.

“We’re not dealing in big budgets,” Steven Wistrich acknowledged, “and we’re not trying to be pretentious. But we have a few very fine dancers, and we’re going to feature them. We’re going to rehearse them to death so there’s a good sense of professionalism in this performance.”

Aficionados of ethnic dancing can catch the Pasacat Philippine Performing Arts Company on June 12, when the troupe presents an alfresco Philippine Day Lawn Program, sponsored by the House of the Philippines.

The performance, celebrating Philippine independence day, begins at 2 p.m. in Balboa Park.

The program will feature an extended company (including two pieces danced by school children), a broad mix of cultural expressions indigenous to the Philippines, authentic costumes, and the hollow sounds of ethnic instruments played by members of the Pasacat Randalla and Percussive Ensemble.

The notion that the grass is always greener on the other side of the street might apply to dance groups as well. Audiences everywhere seem to take for granted the home-grown product and embrace visiting artists like conquering heroes.

Take San Diego’s Three’s Company. The troupe made its first concert tour to the Bay Area after a long hiatus, with a company of 10 modern dancers, and came back exhilarated by the warm reception from audiences and critics alike.

“The audiences were only modest in size because of the Memorial Day weekend,” said co-artistic director Jean Isaacs. “But they were very enthusiastic, and the reviews were wonderful.”

The San Francisco Chronicle called the San Diego-based dancers “remarkably strong technically, and highly personable performers.”

“Their production values were never less than 100%,” it said, noting that “the maturity of this company is something to relish.”

The Examiner was almost as glowing in its praise of the troupe, calling Three’s Company “a classy, appealing 10-member troupe” and commending its “enviable tenaciousness.”

“It was great,” Isaacs said. “We knew we weren’t going to make money up there, but we needed exposure, and we needed those reviews. We were pleased that so many of the Bay Area’s leading choreographers came out to see us, too.”

There might be other fringe benefits from the San Francisco trip, but it’s too soon to celebrate, Isaacs added. “Well, there was a little nibble about another concert, but it’s still not definite.”