1988 THE YEAR IN REVIEW : Dance

W as 1988 the year of the dead in the Orange County arts scene? Well, it was the year Pacific Symphony conductor Keith Clark was termed “a dead fish,” the year William Shakespeare was nearly a dead duck in Garden Grove and the year the rock zanies in Oingo Boingo held yet another “Dead Man’s Party” at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

Jokes notwithstanding, there were encouraging signs of life locally. South Coast Repertory Theatre won major national recognition with the 1988 Tony Award as best regional theater in the country. The Grove Theatre Co. triumphed over considerable civic adversity that threatened for a time to shut down the county’s only annual Shakespeare festival. The Pacific Symphony demonstrated new enthusiasm , with concerts led by guest conductors vying for the soon-to-be-vacated music director post.

Local rock bands seemed to flourish, live and on record, despite a paucity of clubs in the county that would book them or radio stations that would air their music. The Improv in Irvine paved the way for a significant increase in the quantity and quality of stand-up comedy in the county.

With that in mind, in the following four pages critics for The Times Orange County Edition offer compendiums of the best--and in some cases, the worst and the silliest--that the county had to offer during the year in art, music, dance, theater, pop and comedy. *International star Fernando Bujones danced Lensky in John Cranko’s “Onegin” as a guest with the National Ballet of Canada, June 7 to 12, at the Center. But the company was not lacking in its own roster of dancers. Among a trio of casts, Sabina Allemann was a most lyric, expressive Tatiana, and Frank Augustyn a cold, world-weary Onegin.

The Canadians also brought Glen Tetley’s “Alice,” with Kimberly Glasco as a melting Young Alice and Rex Harrington as a Byronic Lewis Carroll.

As a curtain-raiser, the company danced no less than Balanchine’s profound “The Four Temperaments”--and danced it superbly.

*Merche Esmeralda brought demonic power, shattering intensity to “Medea” during the Royal Spanish National Ballet run at the Center, Aug. 2 to 7.

*American Ballet Theatre unveiled a costly new staging of “Swan Lake” by company artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov during its Nov. 29 to Dec. 11 run at the Center. Five pairs of Swan Queens and Siegfrieds danced in Orange County.

ABT excelled in Balanchine’s masterpiece, “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.”

Also during ABT’s run, three former members of Twyla Tharp Dance company (Kevin O’Day, Jamie Bishton and Daniel Sanchez)--folded into the New York company now that Tharp is artistic associate of ABT--appeared in her inventive, virtuoso “The Fugue,” danced to silence.

*The dance department at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa sponsored two dance and music events in October and netted about $3,000 to benefit ACTION (AIDS Coalition to Identify Orange County Needs), a 4-year-old grass-roots organization that provides educational services and coordinates informational meetings for the public, among other aims.

Participating groups included Rhapsody in Taps (formerly LTD/Dance Unlimited), the Gloria Newman Dance Theatre, Ecos de Espana, Middle Eastern dancer Angelika Nemeth and composer Lisbeth Woodies.