Joffrey Ballet Raises $1 Million in One Month : Dance: The company, nearly $2 million in debt, will reorganize its management structure to resolve its continuing financial difficulties.

Gerald Arpino, artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet, announced Tuesday that the company has raised over $1 million in the last month, including a $300,000 gift from Diane Disney Miller of Los Angeles.

At a Tuesday press conference, Arpino also said the company is reorganizing its management structure in an effort to resolve the company’s continuing financial difficulties.

“We may all have to tighten our belts, but that’s not new to me.”

The company has a deficit near $2 million. Arpino said the company is negotiating with the federal government to arrange a payment schedule for approximately $800,000 in past-due payroll taxes.

The new money, solicited during the company’s most recent crisis last month, is composed of a mixture of private and public donations, including a $50,000 grant from Philip Morris Companies Inc.

Arpino said that the company will soon complete a comprehensive new budget and management plan intended to improve the ballet company’s finances. The company’s new structure may include a special director of fund-raising and development who may enjoy a status comparable to the artistic and executive director posts.

The ballet’s former executive director, Penelope Curry, resigned May 16. Arpino said that no replacement had yet been identified. Charles Raymond, former managing director of the New York City Ballet, is currently serving as a management consultant to the Joffrey.

Arpino resigned as the Joffrey’s artistic director on May 1 in a dispute with the board, but returned three weeks later after a tumultuous Los Angeles season that included legal threats and staff and board resignations.

“The changes in the Joffrey are because . . . I stood up for my artistic rights,” said Arpino, adding that the board was trying to set up “a separate operating company that completely stripped me of any artistic goals and achievements. I could not allow that to happen to the American artist,” Arpino said, comparing his position to that of other artists and arts groups who are under increasing pressure to be profitable as well as creative.

The ballet, which is based both in New York and Los Angeles, has named an 11-member executive committee composed of Arpino, Brad Brian, Carl Epstein, Stephanie French, Ronald Gumbaz, Patricia Kennedy, Luisa Kreisberg, Jesse Robert Lovejoy, Mary Keough Lyman, Michael Tennenbaum, and Alison A. Winter. Epstein, Gumbaz and Kreisberg resigned last month but returned to the board following Arpino’s reinstatement. Tennenbaum, senior managing director of corporate finance for a Los Angeles investment banking firm, is a new board member.

“It has been confirmed that the business of the company is art,” Arpino said, “and the Joffrey is once again returned to its artists, Still, today, art is a business and in order to ensure the survival of one’s company, the artistic director must address the fiscal responsibilities of the company.”