ABT Will Return to the Music Center in August : Dance: American Ballet Theatre will visit the Pavilion for two weeks after a 10-year absence.

American Ballet Theatre and the Music Center finalized an agreement Wednesday to bring the 51-year-old company to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for two weeks, Aug. 6-18, marking its return there after a decade’s absence.

“I am not only thrilled that we could come to terms,” said ABT co-director Jane Hermann, “but the Music Center has shown the kind of cooperation that makes us feel entirely welcome.

“As I’ve made clear many times, we belong in Los Angeles and this visit will be a trial balloon--testing to see if there is still support for us.”

Sandra Kimberling, president of the Music Center Operating Co., said that she and other officials have been “doing everything to bring about this happy end” for nearly a year and even before that had tried to work ABT into the calendar.

Hermann cited as a previous obstacle the Joffrey Ballet’s tenure as the resident dance company at the Music Center. “What changed,” she said, “was the departure from the Joffrey of (executive director) Penelope Curry. She dictated when and how long we would play and that our ticket sales would be tied to the Joffrey’s subscriptions. Our serious talks began when Curry left.”

But the bottom line in this negotiation involves Music Center financial support of ABT, which, according to Music Center president Esther Wachtell, is “the first recipient of a new dance program we’ve established in typical resident company mode.”

She would not disclose a dollar amount but said “it is at the level requested by Hermann and her board.”

ABT’s contract for the August run was signed exactly one month after the Music Center announced that it would not continue the Joffrey Ballet as a resident company beyond its upcoming--and now valedictory--season at the Pavilion.

In fact, Hermann admitted her concern that “the public might be confused about where we stand in relation to the Joffrey. While the timing makes it look like Ballet Theatre entered when Joffrey exited, the truth is we could not fill their standing May date.”

For two months every spring, ABT plays its most important engagement, the Met at Lincoln Center, and Hermann says she will not let anything interfere with that, citing a $4.9-million advance ticket sale.

But the director, who inherited her job as chief from Mikhail Baryshnikov when he resigned two years ago, said that she was loath to continue bypassing the country’s second largest city with its long-faithful audience.

For that reason, she is “willing to take the higher risk” of a mid-summer, one-shot engagement--meaning no continuing tour to amortize costs and the chance that ticket buyers might be away on vacation.

Until 1981 the company came to the Pavilion as part of its regular touring season, usually in January or March, with other West Coast cities lined up around those dates. That arrangement ended with an altercation between then-director Baryshnikov and Ernest Fleischmann, who complained about his Los Angeles Philharmonic having to share the house with dancers (“who left the rehearsal rooms smelling of sweat”).

The following year saw ABT moving to Shrine Auditorium where it played annually until 1988. In 1983 the Joffrey Ballet became a Music Center resident company, taking up roughly six weeks of the Pavilion calendar.

But the 6,600-seat Shrine, whose sightlines audiences complain about and whose mammoth size precludes the jewel-box setting most dance companies favor, did not compare with the newly opened Orange County Performing Arts Center. As a result, in recent years ABT supplanted Los Angeles on the annual touring schedule with its southerly neighbor. Hermann said she plans to continue the OCPAC visits and that next year the California dates are in January, making February the likely time to tour Los Angeles, but the Pavilion is booked then.

“Assuming our return this August is a (box-office) success, we’ll just have to continue with summer seasons for now,” Hermann said.

Repertory, to be announced in the coming weeks, will most likely include programs the company dances in Paris and Palermo during July, she said. If all goes well, featured ballets might include Antony Tudor’s “The Leaves Are Fading” and Jerome Robbins’ “Fancy Free.”

Hermann, who presented ballet attractions at the Met for 15 years before joining ABT, said that Los Angeles “has had little in the way of dance because it’s a town without presenters who take risks.

“But I see this return to the Music Center as an investment in the future. It’s worth the extra cost to come now, knowing we can start building towards a real presence again here in the premier house.”