Miller & Burnham to Open Highways

After a few delays, some hesitations and serious agonizing over a name for the Santa Monica performance space that he and Linda Burnham are co-founding, Tim Miller sees some light at the end of the tunnel. He expects to open Highways at the renamed 18th Street Arts Complex sometime in March.

“There isn’t much to do, especially since we have no money,” Miller says. “But we’ll put in a floor, then get functioning. There is no zoning problem, because we’re in an industrial area.”

Burnham predicts that “within five years, we should reach the goal (of full occupancy): an arts center inhabited by nonprofit and community arts organizations.”

Already, the “village,” as Miller calls it, houses the Empowerment Project, a film production company and video editing resource. Burnham describes other future occupants:

“High Performance magazine will move in, probably in March,” Burnham said. Burnham was founding editor of the publication and now writes a column for it.

The Electronic Cafe, a global interactive video project, will install its L.A. terminal here, for live connections with Paris and other major centers.

“Then,” Burnham said, “there could be room for up to eight more small-office organizations, depending on how many square feet each one needs.”

In the meantime, the service department of a large automobile dealer remains on the premises, taking up several thousand square feet. That occupant should not be around much longer, Burnham said, now that there is a new landlord on the property (the artist who hired Burnham, and who prefers to remain unidentified). The need for a new performance space became clear to Miller, he said, when “About a year ago, I noticed the collapse of some of our artistic infrastructures.

“A lot of places had closed. We know that the performing arts are often a poor cousin to the visual arts. Opera loses money, while (commercial) art galleries make money,” Miller said.

“Now, I don’t think my performance space is going to save a lot of people. Many other things are also needed. But this can be a help. There are times when artists need to become organizers or producers.”

NO MORE OPERA FOR THE LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC?: The Los Angeles Philharmonic has associated itself twice with Los Angeles Music Center Opera, in the productions of “Tristan und Isolde” in 1987 and “Wozzeck” this season. Earlier, the Philharmonic produced its own “Salome” in the first season of the Music Center (1965) and later, under Carlo Maria Giulini, “Falstaff” (1981).

But future collaborations with the orchestra and the opera company seem not to be in the planning, however. According to Ernest Fleischmann, managing director of the Philharmonic, “in the past, we did opera because we didn’t have the Music Center Opera. But with the arrival of (general director of the MCO) Peter Hemmings, we no longer need two opera producing organizations.”

Hemmings concurs, “we’re talking about reviving ‘Tristan’ and, of course, would use the Philharmonic for that, but that would have to be some years ahead. Working with the Philharmonic was never an annual scheme, anyhow.”

NO ‘NUTCRACKER’ IN SOLDOTNA: Since a makeshift, last-minute, thrown-together production of “Nutcracker” was given there in December, 1986, Soldotna, a small community on the Kenai peninsula south of Anchorage, Alaska, has seen no more “Nutcrackers.”

The December issue of Dance magazine traces the vicissitudes reportedly suffered by the town, which says it hired Christopher Aponte, director of the Spokane Ballet in Washington State. Aponte was contracted, a lawsuit filed two years ago alleges, to dance the leading role in “Nutcracker” and to provide other principal dancers.

When Aponte & Troupe failed to appear, and the townspeople found they had gone elsewhere, Soldotna put on its own “Nutcracker,” drafting dancers from the staff and the local community. Soldotna now seeks $25,000 in compensatory damages and another $25,000 in punitive damages, saying it advanced Aponte money before the scheduled performances.

Aponte’s attorney has been denied his request to have a default judgment set aside; at this point, that part of the proceedings is on appeal.

Gregg Wager contributed to the research for this column.