Rudy Perez Is Put Through the Paces

Choreographer Rudy Perez paces nervously, his arms crossed, as his intense and scrutinizing stare focuses critically on his five sweat-drenched and heavily breathing dancers.

They twist, tumble and turn athletically on the rehearsal floor of Westside Academy while also rotating in and out of clear-cut circular formations--all this against the backdrop of Lloyd Rodgers’ pulsating, synthesized scales.

“Hands straight, elbows flat, eyes wide open,” he calls out calmly but firmly, as if he were an obsessive mother hen teaching his fledglings not just how to fly, but soar.

“Sure, my dancers are like gifted children to me,” he says during a lull in the rehearsal of his newest piece, “Toss Up,” which he will premiere, along with “Celestial Acrobats,” at El Camino College in Torrance on Friday (November 18) at 8 p.m. Visual Artist Nixson Borah will design the sets.

But while Perez admits to feeling lucky about having what he calls “such a dedicated and mature group that’s like family to me,” this last year has been one of the most traumatic and difficult for the artist in a long time.

Even though Perez’s involvement in the Los Angeles Festival last year was critically acclaimed, his company has not received as many offers to perform as he had hoped. This concert at El Camino marks his only major performance to date since then.

To make matters worse, Perez did not get the $8,000 National Endowment for the Arts Choreographers Fellowship this year that he had been accustomed to receiving for the last eight years. This fellowship has kept him afloat during lean times.

“Of course, I’m deeply disappointed,” he says, whispering so that his dancers don’t have to share too much in his financial woes.

“But what am I supposed to do?” he asks. “Give up? At first, I was tempted. But too many people support me--my dancers, my colleagues, and Westside Academy which donates the rehearsal space to us. I can’t burden my dancers with my problems. They’re the only reason I go on.”

According to Perez, the dancers have “enough problems just being up to par to dance” in his company. In fact, during interviews with each of the five, they all characterize their work with Perez the same way: “Demanding as all hell.”

But what, then, made the endowment say “no” to Perez, considering that he has been able to do what so few choreographers can manage in Los Angeles: Maintain and train a loyal company of hard-working dancers?

Perez chalks up the problem to his applying to use the endowment money not for a specific concert, but rather for “process time” to help groom his dancers. (An endowment spokeswoman said reasons for grant denials are “not public.”)

Perez says his dancers are in dire need of continual “crash courses.” “It’s not their fault,” he says. “These dancers don’t go to classes on their own, because L.A. doesn’t offer that kind of environment. And my audiences expect a certain quality of work from me. So that means I have to really put the dancers through lots and lots of company classes. And that takes time and, ideally, money.

“L.A. is not New York,” he says with a smile. “When dancers first meet me, coming from the cultural vacuum that is L.A., they don’t have a real sense of the tradition I come from and the kind of professionalism I demand.”

Perez is referring to his history with the Judson Church avant-garde scene. Twenty years ago, he reacted against the modern dance rigidity of Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham as well as the cool minimalisms of post-modernists like Lucinda Childs and Douglas Dunn with his passionate and personal solo work.

“If I pass any kind of regimen or signature on to my dancers, I hope it’s this: To be able to step outside of yourself as a dancer and see yourself as an ‘other’; to grow spiritually even as you develop physically; to be at once dancer and critic, passionate feeler and detached spectator.”

Has he succeeded?

His dancers voice an unequivocal “yes.” In 1986, dancer Anet Margot Ris had to go to company class for nine months before Perez felt she was ready to join the company.

“Rudy knew there were some problems I had to work out in my personal life,” she says. “The moment I had done the psychic and physical preparation, he was ready to have me. By then, my life had changed.”

Adds Jeffrey Grimaldo, who joined the Rudy Perez Performance Ensemble in 1986: “Rudy demands nothing less than the best you have to offer both mentally and physically. He’s sort of a father figure who also wants to be challenged.”

With that kind of support, Perez simply isn’t allowing his financial doldrums and his own pressing fears about aging to “bring him down.”

“Look, it’s my nature to be critical,” he says. “Sure, L.A. could be more supportive to its own. A venue like UCLA doesn’t do a fraction of what El Camino does to support the local dance community.

“But on the other hand, having my dancers is like having a rose garden. It’s damn hard work cultivating it. But I watch them grow--they do amazing things at times--and I feel worthwhile, purposeful.

“I feel as if I’m helping to keep dance flourishing in this town. So for the time being, the material success--and even the number of gigs we get--is secondary to the important training going on. The work just has to go on.”