Stars Come Out for Canadian Gala

One of the world’s most spectacular annual dance galas--Le Don des Etoiles (The Gift of the Stars)--will take place at Toronto’s 3,162-seat O’Keefe Centre Wednesday night, after a premiere in Montreal on Saturday.

International luminaries such as the Kirov’s Farukh Ruzimatov, American dancer Fernando Bujones and the Paris Opera Ballet’s Elisabeth Platel are expected to draw a well-heeled sellout crowd to the black-tie benefit. The local branch of the American-founded Variety Club--a charitable organization of show business people--expects to raise $243,000 toward a new aquatics facility for disabled children.

On Saturday night, most of the same cast was scheduled to dance for a black-tie audience in Montreal’s 2,976-seat Place des Arts to raise what local organizers hope will be $133,000 to aid handicapped children.

The idea for the gala benefit began in 1986 when French osteopath Phillipe Druelle approached a Montreal friend, Victor Michael Melnikoff, for help in raising money for a newly created Canadian Osteopathy Foundation.

Melnikoff, an entertainment business lawyer and avid balletomane whose French-born wife, Nathalie Michele Grosshenny, is a dancer, proposed a star-studded ballet gala.

The first event in Montreal in 1986, titled “An Exceptional Evening of Dance,” raised only $21,000. But Melnikoff thought it promising and believed it could become a major international ballet event.

Melnikoff took over as director general of the newly named Don des Etoiles volunteer committee and enlisted the support of Canadian ballet’s Frank Augustyn, who became the gala’s artistic director. Together Melnikoff and Augustyn managed to sweet-talk a stellar roster of artists to sacrifice vacation time to dance in Montreal.

The 1987 gala, the first official Don des Etoiles, included dancers such as the Paris Opera’s Sylvie Guillem (not appearing this year although her photograph is still used on the gala poster after her 1987 attendance), Patrick Dupond, the Bolshoi’s rising star Andris Liepa (now with American Ballet Theatre) and four leading members of Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet.

“From the first tentative gala that was thrown together on a whim and a prayer,” says Melnikoff, “we suddenly went to a ballet gala that rivaled the best anywhere.”

Born in Shanghai but brought up in San Francisco and then Montreal, Melnikoff is known professionally as a very persuasive deal-maker. He was able to bring the Canadian subsidiary of Wang, the international computer company, on board as principal sponsor.

In return for extensive publicity, Wang Canada this year has invested $122,000 in each of the two Don des Etoiles galas. Melnikoff says Wang Canada has committed itself as sponsor through 1992 and the American parent company is interested in bringing the gala to the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Center president Thomas R. Kendrick says that he has not been contacted about the matter but would be interested in exploring it.

“The company is definitely looking for American sponsorship exposure,” says Melnikoff, “and we need other venues besides Montreal and Toronto. Bringing in this kind of talent for just two evenings is like asking a thoroughbred to run 15 yards.”

Melnikoff wanted to bring the gala to New York City and had the vigorous support of longtime Dance Magazine editor, William Como, but when Como died last fall plans stalled.

The fact that Le Don des Etoiles has added a Toronto performance this year pleases Melnikoff. Toronto is a richer city than Montreal and the local Variety Club organizing committee is pricing its premium seats at $400, twice the Montreal top. Premium prices, however, do include a pre-performance cocktail reception and a post-curtain dinner party where, in past years, performers have let their hair down to dance on the tables.

For artistic director Augustyn, however, the extra venue creates added scheduling problems. Not all the 28 dancers available for Saturday’s Montreal gala can make it to Toronto, which gets to see only 24.

Ruzimatov, however, will make his presence felt at both events. Now attending his second Don des Etoiles, he says it’s like “a second company” to him. “It’s a non-competitive environment where we all clap each other in the wings,” he says. Among his Kirov colleagues: Yulia Makhalina, Kiril Melnikov and Irina Chistiakova.

The audience tends to view the event as a quasi horse race to see who can jump the highest or turn the most. Canadian ballerina Karen Kain says she tries to ignore this and for her own appearance chooses something that requires the audience to stay quiet and think. This year it’s a pas de deux from Roland Petit’s ballet version of Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past,” which she dances with Denys Ganio (Ballet National de Marseille).

Unlike many galas, Le Don des Etoiles features a number of new partnerships--for instance, Ruzimatov of the Kirov dancing opposite Nina Ananiashvili of the Bolshoi for the first time. “The spirit of cooperation and sharing between all these great dancers from different countries and companies is what gives this gala its special appeal,” says Augustyn.

“We are already programming through 1991,” adds Melnikoff, “and frankly the problem is who to exclude.” He has engineered everything from free first-class air passage to complimentary bouquets and hotel suites for his guests. “They’re pampered to hell,” he says.

As for balletomanes who do not have the money to hob-nob with the stars at after-show parties there is at least the chance to see some of the world’s best for a bottom $20 ticket--even if the programming is, as Genevieve Salbaing, artistic director of Montreal’s popular Les Ballets Jazz company puts it, “three hours of wall-to-wall pas de deux.”

GRANTS: The Los Angeles Philharmonic was one of nine orchestras to receive $286,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts--the top dollar award among the $9.4 million divvied up between 179 orchestras.

KCET, with $350,000, and UCLA, with $250,000, top the 1990 list of awards from the Nakamichi Foundation. The W.M. Keck Foundation has given the L.A. Chamber Orchestra $100,000 for its educational activities. . . . The Southwest Chamber Music Society has received matching grants from the L.A. Cultural Affairs Department, the National/State/County Partnership and the Pasadena Arts Commission.

PEOPLE . . . AND PETS: Garth Fagan has been awarded a 1989-90 Guggenheim Fellowship. . . . Film composers Danny Elfman, Michael Kamen, David Newman, Alan Silvestri and Hans Zimmer will talk about their careers in a UCLA Extension session Oct. 7. . . . Pianist Lydia Artymiw makes her Philharmonic debut at Hollywood Bowl Tuesday, playing the Schumann Concerto. . . . Nipper is back. The dog listening to a gramophone (“His Master’s Voice”) returned as the new/old logo on RCA Victor recordings released last month.