Another Episode in Going Back to the Future for Inspiration : Dance: Choreographer Raiford Rogers tries to connect the ‘90s with the ‘50s in his satire ‘So Nice’

It could be a bowling alley or skating rink in 1957, with the bossa nova melodies, the harmonies of the Fleetwoods and the organ stylings of Walter Wanderly. Instead, it’s the rehearsal room at Stanley Holden’s dance academy in West Los Angeles as the Los Angeles Chamber Ballet once again goes back to the future for inspiration.

The work being rehearsed is “So Nice,” billed as bossa nova meets Betty Crocker, Brylcreem and bowling balls. It was choreographed by Raiford Rogers, co-director of the Chamber Ballet, with sets by painter Mark Stock, and premiered Thursday at the Japan America Theatre.

“It’s not easy coming up with very silly movement,” admitted Rogers of this 20-minute piece in which, he’d like to think, June Taylor and George Balanchine would both recognize themselves.

“To be superficial and interesting at the same time: That was the movement challenge. I took a typical Balanchine step and I exaggerated it, to get the feeling that the dancers are moving but not going anywhere. It’s tough, but fun. I’ve wanted to do something like that in a ballet all my life; I have an excuse now.”

Stock, a contemporary and friend of Rogers, has re-created a series of 8-foot-square billboards that mimic the flavor of display advertising of the period. A dour Betty Crocker, manicured fingers caressing suavely Brylcreemed male hair, Fig Newtons a yard wide and a livid T-bone steak will share the stage with the dancers, adding context to the satire in the movement.

But driving the work will be the ‘50s sounds. “I couldn’t get away from the music,” said Rogers. The tunes playing in the rehearsal studio also filled supermarkets in Bad Axe, Mich., while he was growing up.

The sound used to turn his stomach. “Now I’m in love with it,” he said. “The underbelly of that whole period intrigues me. The surface was the big lie: wonderful, lily-white, perfect neighborhoods. They wanted to believe it existed. And at the same time we were sending advisers to Vietnam. A woman in the high school who became pregnant was literally moved out of the community. Rock ‘n’ roll was considered a communist plot.

“The more I think about 1990, the more I remember 1960. Here we go again.”

Rogers is trying to connect the ‘90s with the late 1950s. “I don’t know if history repeats itself, but it sure seems to spiral,” he said as the dancers execute movements that could have come straight from a halftime show by the Raiderettes or the Laker Girls. A collage of sound effects re-creates a suburban afternoon, with sprinklers whooshing, dogs barking, birds chirping and a new house going up next door.

He’s working with a cast of six, but would “like to do it with 18 some day.” The “girls,” who range from 18 to their mid-30s, will wear little flared skirts and forced Miss America smiles. “Those smiles, when I was growing up, . . . created the illusion that all was well,” Rogers said. “You smiled and surrendered melancholy. You feared questions and you resisted reason.”

Stock’s huge paintings look like they’ve been moldering for decades in a warehouse, but in fact the artist painted, distressed and drilled holes in them just last month, working in his Wall Street loft downtown.

“I love taking something and scratching it up,” said Stock, whose work on “So Nice” marks his fourth collaboration with Rogers. “I love his aesthetic, and the way I’m treated as an artist. They tell me the theme; I come up with the concept.”

Painting scenery differs from the fine artwork he sells mainly in that “it’s a lot looser and a lot bigger, so it reads far away. It’s more exaggerated.” He also finds it “liberating because I’m not worrying about art history. . . . It’s pure technique: easy, and so much fun.”

The four-performance program at the Japan America Theatre includes an expanded version of “Dmitri,” last season’s spoof on story ballets (based on a libretto by Woody Allen), that will fill the stage with dozens of bizarre ballet figures including dancing lettuce leaves. It also sports a set design by Stock. Another premiere will be Laurence Blake’s “Good-Bye,” a duet for himself and Victoria Koenig, the other L.A. Chamber Ballet director, to a jazz composition by the late Art Pepper.

Los Angeles Chamber Ballet, which was founded in 1981, has charted slow, steady growth in a period when similar small ensembles are foundering. Its budget recently topped $100,000 for the first time, mostly as the result of assiduous corporate and foundation fund-raising by Rogers and devoted assistance from members of the company’s board of directors, many of whom regularly observe rehearsals.

“Our funding keeps growing,” reported Rogers. “We got breakthrough support from the Irvine Foundation, California Community Foundation, BankAmerica, Weingart, Ahmanson, Ticor. It’s almost doubled since last year.”

The company last summer acquired national representation, under the auspices of Mainstage Management. The Mainstage connection has so far yielded plans for a tour of the Midwest early next year, and an East Coast tour later in 1991.

After the four-performance JAT run, the Chamber Ballet departs for a tour of California and a visit to Sedona, Ariz., showing “The Little Prince” and “So Nice.’ A trip to Japan, perhaps as early as October, is also in the planning stages.

“Our plan is to have two tours, spring and fall. We know so many dancers, a lot of them from Los Angeles but now working in Ohio or Boston or the National Ballet of Canada, who’d love to live in L.A. and dance with us, if we could give them long-term contracts.”

“Dance companies are so hard to get off the ground,” Rogers said. “We started with no stars and no money, and slowly it’s happening. The curve is going up, in stages that we can handle. It’s sort of a little miracle.”