Move to Santa Barbara for Martha Graham? : Dance: She is considering a performing and teaching residency with the university.

Modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, who grew up here before founding her New York company 63 years ago, is considering a second home for her dance company in Santa Barbara.

Under preliminary plans laid by Graham associates, the performing and teaching residency would last six weeks to three months each year, beginning as soon as February, and might team the world-renowned dance company with UC Santa Barbara.

“This is where she started dancing, and this is where she would like to finish dancing,” said Eva Haller, a Santa Barbara philanthropist and co-founder of a task force investigating the possible Graham residency.

“Right now, Santa Barbara is the first choice of the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance,” said David Resnickow, New York-based consultant to the Graham company and president of Arts and Communications Counselors.

“There’s a pretty solid economic base there. Second, it’s a great location in terms of the number of large cities in the region that are within one-day touring access.”

The scope of activities and the financial underpinnings of the effort remain unclear, however, and university officials are cautious about the idea.

“You take a performance company of that stripe and put it alongside the teaching function of the university, and it’s a terribly important activity,” said Edward Birch, UCSB’s vice chancellor for institutional development.

“But there are so many questions that need to be answered that it isn’t at the point yet that any of us would view it with particular optimism. . . . It needs to fit in with our academic program here, and certainly with our department of dance. And as well, it cannot mean in any way a financial burden on the university.”

Birch said he and UCSB Chancellor Barbara Uehling had each briefly discussed the possible move with Haller, who sits on the UCSB Foundation’s Board of Trustees. Another meeting, which will include Haller and UCSB dance department chairman John Chapman, is scheduled for Friday.

Haller said she spoke with Graham most recently at the choreographer’s 96th birthday party in New York on June 12. The task force mulling the move, Haller said, so far consists of her and Robert Light, another prominent Santa Barbara philanthropist. Eventually, she said, the group will grow to six or eight and make substantial financial contributions to the effort. The first-year cost of the enterprise, Haller said, might run “between $500,000 and $1 million, I think. . . . It is the seed money that we have to put into their coming out.” Subsequent seasons, she said, would probably be less costly.

“The county, the university and the state will all have to help us in this. This is not an endeavor that I think Martha Graham can or should finance,” Haller said.

She said her target is to deliver the company for its first Western residency next February.

Resnickow said he was hoping that plans for a Santa Barbara residency would solidify by October. Eventually, he added, “the Graham company would love to be the cornerstone and catalyst for a Santa Barbara arts festival, not just a dance festival but something on the level of Spoleto or Santa Fe.”

In a move to reduce accumulated deficits, the Graham company took an uncharacteristic eight-week layoff in January and February, and has retained Resnickow in hopes of boosting and diversifying revenues.

He has raised possibilities including clothes-licensing, corporate sponsorships (the company’s Far Eastern tour this fall is sponsored by Chase Manhattan Bank) and sales of castings from sculptures made for the company by Noguchi. The Santa Barbara residency and the diversified support it could bring, Resnickow said, are further elements of those plans.