ABT Cancels L.A. Dates; Frozen Out by Joffrey?

American Ballet Theatre will not dance in Los Angeles in 1990, said Jane Herman, executive director of the company. However, the company remains scheduled to appear from March 6 to 18 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

The company had announced plans to dance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for two weeks in July, nine years after its last engagement there.

Ballet Theatre’s decision came after the collapse of negotiations with the Music Center Operating Co. to bring the company back to the Pavilion for annual engagements from 1990-92, sources said. But whether Ballet Theatre canceled or the Music Center withdrew an offer remained open to debate.

Herman said that the Music Center Operating Co. “withdrew an offer (for annual Ballet Theatre engagements) that was on the table and approved by the officers of ABT,” and she blames that withdrawal on the Joffrey Ballet, the resident dance company of the Music Center.

“I was told not to fly out to sign the three-year agreement--because I couldn’t have it,” Herman said. “I was told in no uncertain terms that we could not play two consecutive years (at the Pavilion)--and this was a decision by the Joffrey.” She agreed that the initial proposal for annual ABT appearances at the Pavilion was made by ABT, before she joined the company in September.

“For a company of our size to go into July, unassisted by anyone--to be completely at risk, and yet have no ability to build a subscription audience (at the Pavilion, over a minimum three-year-period)--was unacceptable,” she said. “We would have had no jurisdiction over our future.”

Penelope Curry, executive director of the Joffrey Ballet, denied that her company had any veto power over Music Center bookings. “That’s strictly the (Music Center) Operating Co.,” she said. The operating company’s executives agreed and said that the Joffrey’s role was strictly advisory.

However, Curry also said that the operating company had asked the Joffrey for its opinion of the three-year Ballet Theatre proposal, and “we recommended against it” on principle.

She explained that only the Music Center resident companies (which include, at the Pavilion, the Joffrey Ballet, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Music Center Opera) are guaranteed annual performance dates. “Having as little as three weeks more available (for dance at the heavily booked Pavilion) up until Disney Hall opens, we wouldn’t want L.A. closed out to everyone except one or two companies,” she said.

“It is our feeling that there should be a variety of dance at the Music Center. Beginning in 1992, the Joffrey has been asked to coordinate dance at the Music Center, and we wanted ABT to be the first company to be invited (for a proposed subscription dance season).”

That invitation, made this July, was for appearances every other year, Curry said, “but Jane (Herman) said that until she had finalized negotiations with the operating company (over the three-year proposal), she didn’t want to talk about 1992.” Herman agreed with Curry’s account of the 1992 situation.

Sandra Kimberling, president of the Music Center Operating Co., confirmed the Joffrey’s influence on the decision to reject Ballet Theatre’s three-year proposal. “We chose to pursue musical theater for ’91 (instead of offering the time to Ballet Theatre) and support the Joffrey Ballet in our decision, she explained.”

However, Kimberling said the operating company “had made Jane a very fair deal for 1990. But she considered 1990 only as the first step in an annual commitment. . . . It was definitely a permanent arrangement (one that would last beyond the three-year proposal) that ABT wanted as far as I’m concerned.”

A gala celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary was to have been part of the 1990 engagement.

Leslie E. Schoof, Ballet Theatre general manager, was in charge of negotiations with the Music Center before Herman joined the company. He said that in discussions and preliminary negotiations--”all along”--the Operating Co. always accepted the premise that ABT would be coming each year on a self-presentation basis. “They spoke about offering us a one-year contract, renewable annually,” he said.

Chuck Schneider, chairman and chief executive officer of the operating company, explained that, since the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera ceased to be a Music Center resident company, “the one thing we don’t have on a regular basis is musical theater.”

He said that the possibility of “The Phantom of the Opera” continuing to play the Ahmanson through the summer of 1991 helped shape the decision to put musical theater in the Pavilion that summer rather than Ballet Theatre. But he emphasized that “we’d love to have ABT there--and we’d love to have other dance companies there as well.”

The Music Center is not yet prepared to announce what attraction will fill the dates previously assigned to Ballet Theatre--but operating company executives said there is no shortage of applicants.

Curry said the Joffrey had never objected to plans for an ABT season at the Pavilion in July, 1990, and, indeed, had agreed to a request from the operating company to help market that season through flyers inserted into Joffrey programs. But she also said that the ABT cancellation involved causes other than the problem of the Pavilion’s long-term availability.

“It is my understanding that the main concern that ABT had for 1990 was the risk of playing against the Bolshoi (Ballet) at the Shrine,” she said. (Half of Ballet Theatre’s two-week engagement at the Pavilion would have overlapped the Bolshoi season.)

Curry agreed that unconfirmed reports of engagements in Orange County by the Royal Ballet (in late July and early August) and the Australian Ballet from (Aug. 7 to 12)--plus the attention to be given the dance-dominated 1990 Los Angeles Festival in September--also made for what she called “a very risky summer.”

Kimberling also said that the Bolshoi engagement was a key factor in Ballet Theatre’s decision not to dance in Los Angeles. “If the Bolshoi hadn’t been there, ABT would have taken its chances,” she declared. “I told Jane that if it was my decision, I wouldn’t come.”

Schneider was even more emphatic. “There’s just no doubt in my mind that the direct competition with the Bolshoi, and ABT’s own appearance in Orange County in the spring caused them to cancel,” he said.

Herman denied that the issue of Bolshoi competition was pivotal, though she also said that she didn’t know which dates the Bolshoi would play in Los Angeles when she joined the company and picked up the negotiations.

“I’m not saying that the Bolshoi being there didn’t cause us to worry about the rep we were bringing,” she said. “It certainly changed some of our (box-office) projections, too. But the major problem was that the idea of an ABT presence annually (at the Pavilion) was not what they (the Joffrey) saw to their advantage. They wanted us every other year and to bring in other companies in the interim years. All of which would be attached to their subscriptions.”

“(We) cannot afford high-risk factors in the summer if we can’t build (our own) subscription audiences,” she said. “We can’t allow our company to be part of a major financial risk in order to bolster subscriptions in which we have no say.”

She said the July, 1990, dates were not connected to any other nearby engagements--what’s called a “runout.”

“A completely segregated engagement like this one is extremely costly,” she explained. “We’re talking about 140 people, 10 or 12 trucks out on tour. We were prepared to do it as an investment, to build a (subscription) audience at the Pavilion and in hopes of securing more attractive dates when the Disney Hall opens (in 1992). But not as a one-year-deal with absolutely no knowledge of where that would take us.”

Herman said she wasn’t sure whether Ballet Theatre would dance in Los Angeles in 1991, and wanted to look at plans for that year “completely fresh.”

As for the invitation to join the Pavilion’s subscription dance season the following year, she characterized herself as adaptable. “If we have to negotiate with the Joffrey for ‘92,” she said, “we will see what the future is.”