A Solution to Dance About : Concert: Three choreographers team up to solve the problem of finding a stage to hold a concert.

Three choreographers in search of a concert stage have found a single solution.

“It’s very expensive to produce a concert on your own,” said San Diego-based dance maker Pamela Turner. “Even companies have a hard time because there aren’t many (affordable) venues in San Diego. But it’s really tough for independent choreographers.

“Anyway, it takes so long for me to create enough pieces to fill a whole program, it would be at least two years between concerts if I did the whole concert. That’s why I try to find artists I respect and work with them.”

Last year, Turner teamed up with Cate Bell, a local independent who turned out to be something of a kindred spirit. The results were so rewarding for both of them that they decided to have another go at co-presenting this weekend.

Choreographer James Kelly was invited to add his modern jazz perspective to the kinetic mix--after Turner discovered his work at a recent low-tech concert. The threesome will unveil a program of new works at Sushi Gallery on Friday and Saturday night at 8 o’clock.

“Part of the motivation for getting together was economics,” Turner acknowledged, “but I like working with people like Cate and James. We complement each other.”

The concert, “When Choices Count,” takes its name and its thematic content from two of the major works on the program--Turner’s “Choices,” a dramatic theater piece, and Bell’s “What Number Were You Expecting?” an abstract suite of dances that serves as the curtain-raiser the concert.

“My piece is about making choices,” said Turner, “and Cate’s is more abstract. It’s about numbers. That’s why we came up with ‘When Choices Count.’ ”

Where does Kelly fit into this odd equation?

“I don’t really fit into the theme,” he noted. “Mine is a straight jazz dance--I don’t want to call it just entertainment, but it’s pure movement.”

“There’s no message in mine either,” Bell interjected. “I’m more interested in abstraction. It’s almost as if I’m painting with time and space, moving and composition. I don’t really have anything to say in my dances.

“‘What Number Were You Expecting?’ is just abstract modern dance--no story,” she explained. “I’m just playing with numbers and groupings. (The dancers) have to count a lot, so it takes concentration.”

Turner, who spearheaded the concert with support from the San Diego Area Dance Alliance’s Independent Artist Grant Program, definitely had something to say when she conceived her angst-filled foursome, “Choices,” a 40- minute theater work.

“I always have something to say,” she said. “I’m driven by what I have to say.”

In “Choices,” relationships and the complex emotions they generate, are the driving force for Turner.

“It’s a dance about the repercussions of making choices. First, the dance and theater sections are entirely separate (with two actors and two dancers interpreting the feelings), but later there’s an integration of the dancers and the actors. It becomes a cohesive marriage of dance and theater.”

Turner credits an original score by composer Mary Kidd (using keyboard, synthesizer and a Midi interface to a computer) for the jarring emotional depths tapped in the dance.

“I had to add a hopeful ending,” she said, “otherwise the audience would be completely devastated by it.”

The performers in this ad hoc ensemble were culled from different quarters of the dance and theater community. However, there is one name that shows up in every piece on the program.

“Tonnie Haig (who danced last weekend at Jazz Unlimited’s season-opener) is the one constant,” said Bell. “We all worked with her.”

Bell also has choreographed a solo section for her new dance suite on herself.

She said with a laugh that she thought she was retired from dancing. “But it was more practical to work on the solo myself, instead of trying to find someone else at that point.”

Turner is 38 and a new mother, but as she pointed out, “I’m not ready to give up. I love to perform.”

Kelly is the only one of the three who won’t appear on this program. The busy choreographer insists he has no intention of returning to the other side of the footlights.

“I certainly don’t,” he assured. “I never really wanted to be a performer. When I first started dancing, I knew I wanted to be a choreographer, but I realized I would have to learn the nuts and bolts first. You learn from watching other choreographers work. You really can’t learn how to be a choreographer in school.”

If this pair of performances are successful, the three independent dance makers hope to work even more closely in future productions.

“I’m hoping to do some collaborative work as the next step,” said Turner. Bell is game, but she has collaborated with other artists in the past. Only Kelly, a self-professed “obsessive,” has any real doubts about the results of this kind of artistic give and take.

“I’d like to try, but I don’t know how I’d do in that situation. I’d probably be the difficult one,” he said, only half in jest.