Sugarplum of a Christmas gift from a new ballet company

In the spacious dance room at the Carson Community Center, young Clara lies asleep on the floor, unaware that her Christmas toys are about to come to life.

On tiptoe, their arms and wrists poised like paws, the other dancers scurry about like the menacing mice they’re supposed to be. But not for long. Soon, the magically alive toy soldiers appear on the scene and make quick work of the mice in a dramatic series of swoops and turns.

It’s all in an evening’s rehearsal of “The Nutcracker,” the ballet that has come to be as much a part of the holiday season as the “Hallelujah Chorus” and shopping-mall pandemonium.

This year, the Tchaikovsky work is doing double duty--as a holiday treat and as the first public performance of the South Bay’s new Pacific American Ballet Theatre. It takes place Sunday afternoon at Peary Junior High School in Gardena.

Director Mariko Murakami describes the troupe as the West Coast’s “first professional multicultural, ethnic ballet company. They perform in the classical, Russian dance style.”

The youthful dancers--some students, others with professional credits including the Los Angeles and Oakland ballets--are Asian, Latino, black and Anglo.

For a decade, Murakami, who is Japanese-American, directed the Pajarito Ballet Theater in Santa Fe, N.M. “We had Indians, Hispanics and Caucasians,” she said. “We would go to regional festivals, and people would look at our company and say we really did stick out.”

In forming the same kind of company here, Murakami said she is prepared to spend $50,000 of her own money and is looking for grants and commercial sponsors. With two other ballets on tap for next year, Murakami said she aims to keep her dancers on salary and performing throughout California for 30 weeks a year.

Aileen Sie, a Chinese-American dancer and teacher from Gardena who has studied with the Joffrey Ballet in New York and danced with the Los Angeles Ballet, said she was attracted by the idea of a minority-based company as well as by the group’s visits to classrooms to bring dance to youngsters.

Although Murakami has high ambitions for her company, she makes no bones about the simplicity of “The Nutcracker” slated for Gardena. With sets that can be folded into a U-Haul trailer, it is no spectacular. But although it will be an abbreviated version of the ballet, such highlights as the visit to the Snow Kingdom, the Waltz of the Flowers and the Dancing Dolls are there.

The company will perform a complete version of the ballet a month later, in four performances Dec. 22 and 23 at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Dress rehearsals will be open to schoolchildren.

Two months of rehearsals have gone into instilling the meticulous Russian ballet technique into the dancers, creating an ensemble feeling and getting “The Nutcracker” in shape.

In the month between the Gardena and Dominguez Hills performances, Murakami said, “The Nutcracker” will be taken up and down the state in a tour of small cities and military bases. Among them are Camp Pendleton, Paso Robles, Porterville, Ft. Ord, Monterey, Barstow and Lancaster.

Cory-Jeanne Murakami, the company director’s daughter and principal ballerina, said one of the troupe’s aims is take ballet to out-of-the-way places.

Said Mike Yamamoto, who is both a dancer in “The Nutcracker” and a fan of the fledgling company: “These guys are great. Their technical ability is high, and they work well together.”

Yamamoto follows an unusual career path as lawyer, ballet dancer and rock ‘n’ roll band leader. In “The Nutcracker,” he dances the role of the magician who brings the Christmas toys to life.

Although “The Nutcracker” will give the public its first look at the Pacific American Ballet Theatre, the company will display its major focus early next year with two strikingly different ballets on social and historical themes. They are repeats of works Murakami presented in Santa Fe.

“Winter War,” she said, is about the Japanese-American experience, centering on immigration policies that excluded Asians and the injustice of the World War II internment camps. In one scene, she said, “the rape of American justice is done visually, just like a physical rape scene.” The second ballet is “Proud Heritage,” a love story interwoven with the Spanish domination of the Southwest.

Murakami called “The Nutcracker” a Christmas present everyone knows and likes. But she said her company really has another focus: “We’re a message group.”

What: Pacific American Ballet Theatre presents “The Nutcracker”.

When: Sunday, 3 p.m.

Where: Peary Junior High School Auditorium, 1415 W. Gardena Blvd., Gardena.

Admission: $5.

Information: 515-3729.