New Season Promises Best of the Dance World : Stars: An impressive lineup proves that the San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts is keeping in step with the times.

When Fred Colby, director of the San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts, got his latest copy of Dance Magazine in the mail the other day, he was more than a little pleased.

On the cover was a picture of Cynthia Gregory, of the American Ballet Theater, with a caption calling her “America’s Prima Ballerina.” Inside the same issue was an article on the Martha Graham Company.

“We must be in sync with something,” Colby said.

Gregory will be in San Diego on Sept. 26 and 27 to dance at the downtown Civic Theatre, and the Graham company will appear there March 13 and 14. All of the performances are part of the dance foundation’s 1991-92 season, Colby announced Tuesday.

“It’s a very solid season,” Colby said. “We’ll have America’s prima ballerina, the greatest modern company, in Graham, as well as the best African performing group (Les Ballet Africains de Republique de Guinee), and America’s most exciting living choreographer in (New York-based Eliot) Feld.”

The African Ballet will appear at the Spreckels Theatre on Nov. 8 and 9. Feld will be here April 7 and 8. Also in the series is a return performance by the Chicago-based Hubbard Street Dance Company, which will appear at the Spreckels on Feb. 7-9.

With five very different dance companies in the San Diego-based dance presenter’s 10th season, audiences will have the opportunity to see--as they have in past years--a mix of old and new works by both known and less-known companies.

Gregory undoubtedly will draw audiences, for example, but her performances here also will introduce San Diego audiences to the far less well-known BalletMet, a Columbus, Ohio-based classical ballet company with which she will perform. The program will feature Balanchine’s “Mozart Divertimento No. 15.”

Since Graham died last April, her company has not chosen a new artistic director but is continuing to schedule performances. In its third appearance in San Diego in a decade, the company will perform a tribute to Graham with some of her earliest works, Colby said. Which works has not yet been decided.

The series’ mix will turn ethnic in November with the 35-member Ballets Africains de Republique de Guinee, which will incorporate dance, traditional music, and story-telling in a spectacle of drama, acrobatics and comedy.

Colby called the company “the only full-time fully professional performing company out of Africa. They are much more true to the culture (than some of the touring companies from Africa). There are no guitars; it’s all true African culture. There’s a story-telling section, a little of everything, with dancing being the main core” of the program.

Although the African troupe has performed on the East Coast, this is its first West Coast tour.

The Hubbard Street Dance Company--which last performed its modern-jazz ballet here in December, 1989--will perform works by Twyla Tharp this time as part of a three-year project with the choreographer that began in 1990.

In part because of the company’s technical proficiency in modern jazz, Tharp chose the company to “make sure her old works stay in our vocabulary. She chose Hubbard Street as the company best-suited for her works,” Colby said.

After the two Graham company performances, Feld Ballet/NY, known for both modern and classical works, will focus on classical repertory, Colby said, creating a balance for the foundation’s season.

“Feld is going to be doing almost entirely ballet works, all of them Feld works, which is all that they do.” Colby said. “Of course with Feld you don’t need to do anything but. And they are at their peak right now.”

Danah Fayman, the foundation’s board president, said this year’s lineup reflects the kind of mix the group has been aiming for during its decade of experience.

“We’re trying to balance everything with surviving and trying to find things that will be popular and hoping that the audiences will uncover some people they don’t know about,” Fayman said.

“We’re building audiences. Of course, there are some dance audiences in San Diego, with the local companies, and we’re building from that.”

Fayman said the foundation is “doing fine” financially, but she mentioned that low ticket sales last year for the San Francisco Ballet performances had hit hard. But even in these times of economic crisis, which has affected all of the local arts organizations, Fayman said her board plans to continue bringing important dance touring companies to San Diego.

“The board has a commitment to it, and that’s a nice feeling,” Fayman said. “It’s nice to know it isn’t just me.”