Keeping Ailey on Its Toes : Choreography: The dance company is staying true to its late founder’s vision, but it is also fostering the new.

If there’s a dance heaven, Alvin Ailey’s in it, and the late choreographer and founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is “up there giggling,” said company rehearsal director Masazumi Chaya.

Chaya giggled himself just thinking about Ailey’s response to what’s happened to the company since he died in December, 1989. “Alvin’s up there saying, ‘Good- ness ! Oooo, we can do that, too?’ ”

What the Ailey company is doing is taking on several contemporary dances selected by Judith Jamison, former star dancer of the company and successor to Ailey, and exploring “new ideas on how the company should look.”

But Chaya pointed out--reiterating what Jamison has said since becoming artistic director--that Jamison has not changed the company, she’s just expanded it. While maintaining the repertory of dances by Ailey and American modern dance classics made popular by the company since its beginning in 1958, she is adding works that favor formal rather than theatrical approaches.

Twenty-six dancers of the Ailey company will perform a mixture of old and new dances in three programs beginning tonight at the Spreckels Theater. The three-day engagement is presented by the San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts.

Preserving the classics and fostering the new is much in the Ailey tradition, and Jamison carries it forward with the help of Chaya, whom she calls the “miracle of this company” and one who “can remember details and dances like no other.”

Chaya joined the company in 1972, coming from Japan where he danced with ballet companies. Uncertain if he was getting work because he was a good dancer “or because he just happened to be male,” he decided to go to

New York to truly test his ability.

Eventually, he joined the Ailey company, and danced for many years, later becoming rehearsal director-teacher and caretaker of company dances.

“I like to maintain Alvin’s pieces,” he said by phone during an earlier leg of the company’s annual six-month tour, “and always, we have to learn to take care of somebody else’s creative work--that’s very important to being in a repertory company.”

When he teaches a work, old or new, Chaya encourages the dancers to be open to alternative approaches to movement, particularly when contemporary choreography uses music and movements that dancers may not like.

“I teach that there is another thought they can see, another idea about movement. Everything is probably not for everybody . . . but someday, in some dance, they’ll remember what I said, and, if it happens that way, I’ll be happy.”

Chaya and Jamison have been looking for hidden talent while on tour “because young dancers don’t have time or money to go to New York just to audition,” he said.

Dancers not ready for the company can audition for a scholarship to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, where 3,000 dancers take classes, Chaya said, to develop a variety of techniques and go on to dance for other companies.

Sacramento native Dana Hash, 21, and a member of the company for three years, attended the Ailey School. Her first class there, at age 17, was a shock.

“I was expecting 60 girls in a room, makeup on, hair done up, reeking of perfume, the pink tights, the black leotards, everybody competing for attention.”

Having taken summer classes since age 10 with the San Francisco Ballet School, the New York City Ballet’s School of American Ballet, among others, her expectation was based on experience.

“I walked into the Ailey School and four other girls were standing at the barre in holey tights, no make-up. I thought, ‘Oh my God, they must think I’m from outer space,’ because there I was in the pink tights, makeup, and reeking of perfume,” Hash said, laughing at the memory.

The day was memorable for another reason. Halfway though the class, one of the students left and returned with Judith Jamison, who left and returned with Ailey. Hash said Ailey asked her to audition for their scholarship program.

This acceptance was a departure from an earlier, disheartening experience in the New York ballet world, in which Hash was told she was too tall to dance classical ballet. (She and Jamison both are nearly 6 feet tall.)

“The ballet world,” Hash explained, “can be a very white, waspy, racist kind of place. I’m Asian--half white and half Asian--and it’s very hard for those of us who don’t quite fit in with the classical look. With Ailey, there’s Filipinos on stage, Hispanics, blacks, there’s varying degrees of shade, and white people, and this people and that people.

“I didn’t know much about Ailey when I came to the school, but, when I saw my first New York season (of the Ailey company) at the City Center, it was incredible for me.”

Alvin Ailey’s choreographic expression unites people, personalities, cultures, and backgrounds, with its own flair and personal style, Hash said. His work pulls down boundaries that she feels are too slow coming down in the ballet world.

Some of her favorite dances will be performed in San Diego.

Hash says of Ailey’s “Revelations”: “Alvin’s childhood experience of being in a Baptist church. You’ve got to ask yourself why it is that when we dance this in Japan or Italy or anywhere on the face of this Earth, everybody loves it, everybody understands it, it’s something they can relate to--the human experience.”

Hash prefers the company’s theatrical pieces, such as “Blues Suite,” the chain gang despair of Donald McKayle’s “Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder” or the jazzy, competitive flair of “Night Creatures,” set to the music of Duke Ellington and the Count Basie Orchestra. To Hash, the dances touch deep emotions and are more challenging to perform than abstract works, because of the acting required of the dancers.

“Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater-- theater --there’s theater,” she emphasized, “in every piece Alvin Ailey has done.”

The program tonight is a retrospective of Ailey’s works, including “Night Creatures,” “Reflections in D,” a solo to be danced by Dudley Williams, who has been with the company for 28 years, “Hidden Rites,” a mid-70s work, depicting a “secret society” initiation and set to a percussive score, and “Revelations,” Ailey’s 1960 work danced to gospel songs and famous for inspiring encores.

Saturday’s program features contemporary works--a sensuous duet by Elisa Monte, and Ulysses Dove’s “Episodes.” (Judith Jamison’s “Forgotten Time” was scheduled to premiere, but injuries required a program change.)

The “dance masters program” is how Hash and Chaya referred to Sunday’s lineup. Ailey’s “Blues Suite,” “Cry,” and “Revelations” will be performed along with McKayle’s “Rainbow.”

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs at the Spreckels Theatre, 121 Broadway, at 8 p.m. today through Sunday. Ticket information 234-5853.