Adding a Modern Mix to ABT

When the red velour curtain rose after intermission during American Ballet Theatre’s opening night performance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center last week, some of the first-nighters expressed surprise.

The ice-blue tutus, glittering tiaras and storybook sets of Balanchine’s “Ballet Imperial” had given way to a bare stage and three casually dressed modern dancers going through the abstract, quirky, brilliantly inventive, rigorously logical moves of Twyla Tharp’s “The Fugue.”

Tharp, who was appointed artistic associate of ABT in August, has brought seven members of her own troupe into the ballet company. Three are dancing in Orange County: Kevin O’Day, Jamie Bishton and Daniel Sanchez. The fourth, the lithe, fleet Shelley Washington, is overseeing the Tharp repertory here (she won’t actually dance until March when the troupe is engaged in Los Angeles).

Bringing a modern dance contingent into a ballet company has never been tried before. Devoted as they are to different aesthetics and styles, are the groups experiencing any friction?

“No, no way whatsoever,” all four modern dancers said in overlapping voices after a recent rehearsal. The ballet dancers “give us inspiration,” said Washington, “and they’ve been wonderful to all of us.”

“There is no animosity whatsoever,” O’Day added.

Indeed, everyone is being positive. The dancers talk about mutual respect, mutual inspiration and shared repertory. Besides dancing such Tharp works as “The Fugue” and “In the Upper Room” at the Center, the Tharpians also appear in minor roles in Baryshnikov’s new staging of “Swan Lake.”

O’Day is the Master of Ceremonies in Act II and understudies the Spanish Dance and the Mazurka. Bishton appears in mime roles and also understudies the Czardas and the Mazurka. Sanchez is doing mime roles.

Meanwhile, some of the ballet dancers will be learning to move in distinctive Tharpian ways. “Certainly the (ABT) dancers will be learning ‘The Fugue,’ ” Washington said. “There are people who are dying to do it. Dancers come and watch the rehearsals.”

For the Tharpians, the integration includes taking classes with the ABT dancers. Washington calls it “great fun,” but Sanchez admitted to feeling “really intimidated” when he began. “But as I began getting to know everyone, I began feeling a little more comfortable.”

Sanchez studied dance for more than 2 years at the Juilliard School in New York but wasn’t “trained classically” there, he said. “At Juilliard, they teach you ballet more as a base.” He took additional modern dance classes after leaving school, and he worked with a small modern dance company in New Jersey before joining Tharp in 1986.

O’Day, on the other hand, said he has never taken a modern dance class. “I’ve only had ballet.” A member of the Joffrey Ballet before he joined Tharp in 1984, O’Day has danced such roles as the Head Wrangler in Agnes De Mille’s “Rodeo.”

Advancement was never a problem for him, even though he began training late, at 17. “I immediately was thrown on stage,” he said, “because I was tall and I could partner.” He left Joffrey because dances “weren’t being created on you personally. It’s not like working with Twyla. You’re working with that one choreographer and doing new work.”

Bishton, who said his training has been “completely contemporary and modern,” graduated from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia in 1984 with dreams of working with modern dance choreographers Bella Lewitzky, Lar Lubovitch and Tharp.

He has managed to work with all three: Lewitzky during the Olympic Arts Festival in 1984, Lubovitch in 1985, and Tharp in 1985 as well as currently.

All four dancers say they are happy even though they are dancing less than usual. “We’re used to three ballets a night, every night,” Washington said. “With a company of this size, you get on stage once or twice or three times a week, or whatever it is. I don’t know what the plan is going to be, but it’s certainly going to be different for a while. . . .

“People have to understand that this is a merger that officially started working as of Aug. 22, so we haven’t been together for a long period of time. . . . One has to stay very positive about it and give it a chance.”

Washington doubts that the merger ever will be so complete that the Tharpians will be dancing prince roles or classical pas de deux. But Sanchez said he would like to try.

American Ballet Theatre’s engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center continues through Sunday. Information: (714) 556-2787.