DANCE : Troupe Brings Fresh Approach to Ballet : Performance: Ohio company leaves dance-story productions such as ‘Swan Lake’ for large companies. Its focus in Mission Viejo will be untried works.

BalletMet is a regional ballet company trying to make a name for itself outside its home in Columbus, Ohio.

Formed as a civic ballet in 1974, the BalletMet troupe became professional only in 1978, and it has just begun to venture out into the world beyond Columbus--touring, during the last two years, to Cairo, Canada, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania and now to the Golden State.

On its first visit to California, the 22-member company will appear Sunday afternoon at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo.

“It took a couple of years to put a repertory together,” artistic director John McFall said in an interview from Stanford University in Palo Alto, where the troupe was playing. “Until now, we had to bring people to Columbus to see the company.”

BalletMet’s audiences will not see dance-story ballets, such as “Swan Lake” or “Romeo and Juliet,” however.

“We are not set up for (story ballets),” said McFall, who danced with the San Francisco Ballet in 1965-83. “We don’t have the money to do them. We wouldn’t do them very well. Other companies do them well. So why do them?

“We’re endeavoring to create a niche for ourselves and do something in the art of dance that will make a significant contribution.”

That niche, he said, may lie in championing the work of young choreographers.

“I wanted to establish a situation where a choreographer could join a company for a period of time--not just a couple of weeks in which he had to hammer out something, but to have time to know who he was working with and time to be inspired,” McFall said.

Fundamental to that are dancers with “a completely open and accessible attitude.”

“A lot of times, ironically, that’s trained right out of a dancer,” he said. “They’re told every day, ‘This is how you do it . . . and there is no other way to do it.’ So a lot of dancers (think that they) have all the answers, and you can’t get any work out of them.

“Our dancers are strong participants in the collaboration with the choreographers. They do not resist the process.”

The most recent guest choreographer has been James Kadelka, resident choreographer with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal. Clark Tippet, a principal dancer and sometime-choreographer with American Ballet Theatre, will be working with the company this summer for a piece that will be premiered in the fall, McFall said.

McFall’s own work--he has been choreographing since 1968--also figures largely in the repertory of the company. (He described his “Beyond Midnight,” which will be on the program at Saddleback, as a “lyrical-Romantic ballet for five couples” with “its own little narrative, under the surface.”)

Although the company is affiliated with a school of about 750 students (“We turn people away,” McFall said), it is too early for the school to have had an impact on the company.

“It takes five to seven years to train a dancer--when everything goes perfectly,” McFall said.

The company’s dancers are drawn from all over the country, bringing varied backgrounds and training. “Our challenge there, of course, is when we do ensemble work, like (George Balanchine’s) ‘Serenade,’ to bring all that together,” McFall said.

“Basically, what we’ve done is to cultivate the individual characteristics of the artist. The company is a group of dancers, certainly, but not an ensemble company that looks like cookie cutouts or clones. BalletMet has every imaginable body type--short, tall, long leg, bowed legs. But we’re not identifying a very specific aesthetic. Just the opposite.”

Significantly, the company simply lists its members--the average age is 21--alphabetically. There are no divisions into principal dancers, soloists or corps de ballet, as in most major companies.

“We’re too small to do that,” McFall said. “In one ballet, a dancer may have a lead role. In the next, he’ll pitch in and do a less substantial thing. They do it all, because there’s nothing too small. It all matters.”

Actually, McFall didn’t exactly jump at the opportunity to take over the company when the job was offered in 1986.

“I was reluctant because I grew up in the Midwest--Kansas City--and I was not very fond of it,” he said.

But now he can say he has presided over a success story. The growth of the school has necessitated a recent move into a new 35,000-square-foot facility, which provides the school and company with seven studios.

The company has also taken the unusual step of becoming a presenting organization “to better educate and expand” its audience base, booking into Columbus such companies as the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Alvin Alley American Dance Theater.

“It costs a fortune and staff time,” McFall said. “We sometimes make money on it. Sometimes we break even. But it’s important to the community. Dance is an art form we want to make people aware of. When we make it available, people do attend.”

It was not always so easy, he said: “There was no standard (when he came to Columbus). It was absolutely minimal.”

He insisted, however, that his criticisms are not meant to reflect on his predecessor, Wayne Soulant.

“When people are looking at something for years, they take that as the status quo,” he said. “So the first year was very challenging. It took about a year to absolutely come to terms with the community and say, . . . ‘Together we’re going to make this into something absolutely first class.’ . . .

“We have done it without developing a repertory that I call the ‘common denominator’--that is, easy box office. We have developed an audience with what I would describe as real dance. We’ve generated a lot of world premieres.

“In the last decade or so, I don’t think the art of dance has been healthy,” he added. “A lot of people are cautious because of the economics. I’m talking about boards of trustees and artistic directors and such.

“The bottom line is that the thing’s got to float. You’ve got to have a decent box office. So what do you do? You do ‘Swan Lake.’ That’s fine for the local audience, but in a significant sense, what does that do to push the art of dance forward?”

Despite some initial reluctance to join BalletMet, McFall now sounds pleased about what the company has to offer.

“Columbus is poised and on the move. . . . Economically, it’s a very healthy, growing community. There is a lot of support for us. . . . But it’s just the beginning. This is a long process.

“BalletMet has not achieved its goal or its vision, but we’re going to share what we’ve done so far with other audiences.”

BalletMet will make its first Orange County appearance at 3 p.m. on Sunday at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. The 22-member company will dance John McFall’s “Beyond Midnight,” Michael Smuin’s “Shinju” and Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s “Great Galloping Gottschalk.” Tickets: $14, general admission; $12, for seniors. Information: (714) 582-4656.

MORE ON THE AUSTRALIANS--The Australian Ballet may bring a work choreographed Down Under during its Aug. 7-12 run at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

During a brief stop Monday at the Center on her way back to Australia from New York, the company’s artistic director, Maina Gielgud, said the company is considering one of three new works, depending on its success during the upcoming home season.

The ballet, which would be on a program with other works to be announced, would be chosen from pieces by Australian choreographers Stephen Baynes, 34, and Stanton Welch, 19, and New Zealand choreographer Timothy Gordon, 27.

Baynes won first prize in a 1988 Australian choreography competition with “Ballade” (music by Gabriel Faure). That work has gone into the Australian’s repertory, Gielgud said. She did not say what the new work will be titled.

Gordon has worked with the Netherlands Dance Theatre and the Stuttgart ballet. His new work will be based on the Australian Robin Hood folk hero.

Both Baynes and Gordon’s works will receive their premieres in Australia in May, Gielgud said.

Welch is a member of the Australian company’s corps de ballet. His choreographies have already shown promise, according to Gielgud.

“I don’t like experimenting on audiences,” Gielgud said Monday. “Too often I’ve sat in an audience seeing works by ‘new talent’ that should be given ‘a chance.’ It’s not fair to the audience. . . .

“I like to work with a process in which a work is built up from workshops and developed . . . with enough craftsmanship . . . to produce either a miracle or disaster--but at least be interesting.”

The company will also dance Gielgud’s staging of “Giselle” and Serge Lifar’s “Suite en blanc” during its Orange County run.