School in Search of Creative Sparks : CalArts: Inventiveness is the key to success in auditions for the highly selective Valencia institution. One screener says he can spot the quality “in the first 30 seconds.”

The man in the blond Bob Fosse beard was nearly invisible behind an upright piano, tapping out light melodies through the beginning of a dance audition for entry into CalArts. And the six young applicants, dressed in colorful, if ill-matched, tights and leg warmers, appeared comfortable enough as they were led through a series of exercises in standard modern dance technique.

But now the piano playing was over, and dance department Associate Dean Larry A. Attaway stepped away from the instrument to test the creative abilities of these student dancers. Clapping his hands in increasingly complex beats, he directed the students to improvise movements--and they nearly collided in creative expression, spinning, lunging, flailing their arms and scattering throughout the studio.

Department Dean Cristyne Lawson watched from a nearby table, her eyes darting from dancer to dancer, her expression serious. The dancers--five women and a man--were among more than 100 applying for fewer than 30 spaces in the school’s fall graduate and undergraduate dance program. And as with the Valencia institution’s art, film, music, theater and critical studies departments, admission weighed heavily on personal talent and inventiveness.

“Our program has an awful lot to do with creativity,” Lawson said. “So the audition isn’t just technique. Half of it is creative problem-solving.”

Added Ruben Sierra, dean of the CalArts drama program, “I see it pretty quick. You can see it in the first 30 seconds.”

Since the school’s opening in 1970, CalArts has had little in common with most traditional colleges and universities, which typically focus on grades and standardized test scores in their admissions processes. Evaluations of talent through auditions or portfolio submissions remain the key criteria in judging nearly 1,800 applicants a year for about 350 slots, explained Ken Young, CalArts director of admissions for the last eight years.

“It’s always been this way, it’s our tradition,” Young said last week. “We want to rank our students based on the talent they have. We feel it has more relevance to how they are going to perform in the professional art world when they get out of school.

“That has not changed since opening the doors. That won’t change, and that’s one of the main reasons for our being here.”

In recent years, Young added, entrance requirements have become particularly specific. He said the old stories of students applying with personal, free-form and ultimately inappropriate videocassette resumes and other unorthodox methods have long since been replaced with definitive guidelines on portfolio submissions and audition expectations.

Nevertheless, students often draw positive attention to themselves with moments of surprising inventiveness, said Kurt Weinheimer, a six-year CalArts dance faculty member.

“Some people come in and blow us away with a sort of natural inventiveness of what they do,” Weinheimer explained after a February audition. “A lot of times, we’ll have people come in and really not do well in the technique, who aren’t really trained as dancers. And then in the creative part, they’ll do something so extraordinary that we’re willing to say we’ll work with this person in the training side, but they’re going to be a real asset creatively to this community.”

In the studio next door, a young choreographer was directing a dozen student dancers wearing scuba flippers. They marched awkwardly in unison like giant ducks, heads hidden under folded umbrellas while recorded yodeling echoed out of the room. Such imaginative leanings help distinguish CalArts from many other schools, some of which, Weinheimer said, might emphasize classical ballet or dance history.

“This is more, in a sense, a conservancy,” said Sierra, who taught theater at the University of Washington before coming to CalArts 18 months ago. “Here, it’s all the arts under one roof. So it’s a very different feel, a sense of freedom.”

After performing scenes by Shakespeare and David Rabe at an audition this month, drama student Morris Everett said this creative priority compelled him to apply to the school. “What they emphasize is not general education classes,” said Everett, 21, of Cleveland. “What they emphasize is art, period. That’s what I came for.

“I want to be an artist, I want to be an actor,” he added excitedly. “I don’t want to be somebody who just does community theater. I want to be poor and unemployed for a long time.”

After a February dance audition, 18-year-old Natalie Baird said she was initially attracted to the school’s reputation in choreography. And for most of her modern dance audition she felt comfortable, she said, although she became nervous when Attaway emerged from behind the piano, clapping his hands for the improvisation section.

The Idyllwild high school student had only begun working in modern dance after several years focusing on ballet. “I had never done improv, so it was kind of nerve-wracking,” said Baird, who also planned auditions at UCLA and other schools. “It’s totally different. I was in my own world: ‘What am I going to do?’ And I think everyone was, kind of bumping into each other.”

CalArts admits new students only in the fall semester, so auditions are presented annually, usually between November and March, on campus and in major cities across the country. Sierra said he had already visited five cities this year, often back-to-back.

“They’re really packed trips,” added Weinheimer, who traveled and shared audition duties with other dance faculty on the East Coast and elsewhere for about two weeks this year.

California residents make up 34% of the student population, Young said; 58% are from 41 other states and 8% from other countries. About 10% of the students every year are first-time college students, and about 35% are graduate students.

Thomas Mauk, 26, came to Los Angeles from Amsterdam partly to audition for the CalArts dance graduate program, he said. On the recommendation of his former teachers in the Netherlands, Mauk, who entertains ideas combining dance with film and video, went to Valencia as part of a planned trip to the United States. The interdisciplinary tendencies of the school seemed perfectly suited to his plans.

But after his audition, Mauk smiled and explained that he felt “completely awful” about his performance. “I have a feeling I screwed it up pretty much.

“This rhythm part, I couldn’t really figure out what he wanted,” Mauk said. “But I also didn’t have courage enough to say: ‘Stop, explain.’ I felt, OK, it’s just a warming-up thing, until I figured out that was actually it. Then I felt disappointment.”

Still, CalArts faculty members said every effort is made to ensure the auditions are comfortable for participants.

“People get frustrated, but I’ve never seen anyone really lose it emotionally,” Weinheimer said. “We try to set up an atmosphere where it’s not any more stressful. We try to address them in a friendly, comfortable manner. Auditions are extremely difficult. They’re stressful situations, and it’s not necessary to reinforce that level of stress.”

Sierra began a recent theater tryout, in a room scattered with props and scenery, as if he were just teaching a class, saying, “I want you to relax and have a good time.” He spent most of the audition sitting quietly behind the 14 applicants, taking notes and sometimes stopping a prepared scene to coax a more natural performance from a student. In some instances, this meant simply directing the applicant to drop a foreign accent to allow the actor to connect more directly with a character.

One young student began a compelling monologue, creating a violent character of surprising depth in just moments. Then, just as suddenly, the actor stopped, a blank expression on his face. He tried again and stumbled on the same line. Later, Sierra explained that the student had moved up his original appointment at the school by a week, inadvertently leaving him less prepared at the crucial moment. But he would get another chance.

“It happens to different people depending on how well-prepared they are, or just the tension of the moment,” Sierra said later. “It’s like going up and taking your clothes off almost. There’s nothing more difficult than going out for an audition, where you feel there’s so much at stake.”