Troupe Seeks to Fill Professional Void

Young dancers trained in Orange County have had few options to make professional careers here. Other than Laguna Beach-based Ballet Pacifica--which has struggled along for more than 25 years--and a few ensembles associated with ballet schools, they have had few choices or reasons to stay.

Major careers must be made elsewhere, preferably in New York, of course.

Into the breech steps two UC Irvine dance faculty members--James Penrod, chairman of the dance department, and Donald Bradburn, artistic director of concerts.

The two have just co-founded the California Theatre Ballet, which makes a decidedly modest debut on April 12 at UCLA (in Dance Building 208). The free lecture and informal performance, entitled “Styles of Ballet” and part of the UC Intercampus Cultural Exchange Program, will include works by Petipa, Bournonville and Tudor, among others.

Their idea is to create a professional, nonprofit ballet company that will be in residence at UCI but not formally tied to it. Right now, however, the company is made up of 16 dancers, a mix of UCI graduates and students.

But the two founders have virtually no budget at this point. So what makes them think they can succeed?

“It has a good chance because (we already have) space and repertory,” Penrod said in a recent interview. “I really see this growing out of what we already have here. Then we will raise money to hire professional dancers to come in.”

Said Bradburn: “Basically, we have very little in terms of support now. But we have the sets and costumes for the Second Act of ‘Giselle,’ ‘Coppelia,’ ‘Swan Lake’ Act II, ‘Les Sylphides.’ We have ‘Billy the Kid.’ We have three Tudor pieces that we already have the costumes and the scenic elements for. That allows us to get started up with a relatively low budget.”

According to Bradburn, the university will provide rehearsal space and possible use of production facilities--but no cash.

“But what the university can provide represents money to this company, even though it is not up-front money,” he said.

Penrod feels that the lack of formal affiliation with the university will be an advantage because “we can go after private money and get dancers who are not students.”

“Some of the (company) dancers could teach here, however, and (UCI) dancers and students could work in the company,” he said. “These would be complementary benefits.”

They envision the company as “basically a touring company,” according to Bradburn, although he hopes that it can present works in the new Irvine Theatre at UCI when that is scheduled to be completed early in 1990.

The company’s only other scheduled events are, in fact, off campus. It will participate in a “Tribute to Olga Maynard,” the UCI dance historian and senior editor of Dance Magazine who is retiring from the university, on April 16 at Cypress College. The ensemble also will appear as one of 23 Southern California companies and solo artists scheduled to be in the Dance Kaleidoscope Festival in July at Cal State Los Angeles.

Bradburn sees the touring as a major strength for the organization.

“There is a need for a quality, smaller company that tours. A lot of major (ballet) companies don’t tour, even to large cities, much less smaller ones. There are, of course, modern dance companies that tour to small areas.

“My first experience (seeing ballet) was the touring Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. I saw them in Fresno, a relatively small town then. It excited me.”

Bradburn, who serves as artistic director of California Theatre Ballet, hopes to mount significant revivals.

“There is a lot of American Ballet Theatre repertory--dramatic ballets by Tudor, De Mille, Herbert Ross--that ABT no longer performs,” he said. “I think (ABT artistic director Mikhail) Baryshnikov will probably do token revivals of a few works. The rest will be basically lost and never seen again. We would like to do those works, and new choreographies, too.”

Penrod feels that the university can assist in that project because “we are a research institution.”

“We have people who can do research on period styles,” he said. “We have people from the Dance Notation Bureau (in New York), who can read notation of obscure scores and put them back together for historical accuracy and accuracy for period and style.

“We can go back and do Baroque ballets and smaller 19th-Century ballets, and also we plan to produce original ballets as well. We don’t think of ourselves as a museum, but with our research capabilities, we can do things that other companies might not.”

Bradburn says that the company would “need about $500,000” to accomplish everything the two want to do.

Both acknowledge that raising that kind of money will be tough.

“If we have the right package together, I think people outside the university would be willing to support the company, people whose children have left the area to join dance companies,” Penrod said.

“Still, this will have to start slowly and prove its viability. . . . In some ways, it may seem that this is premature. . . . But I feel that if we don’t start moving in that direction, it never will happen.”