Joffrey Ballet Signs Contract With Wiltern for ’92 Season : Ballet: The company, ousted as the Music Center resident troupe last spring, hopes to develop a long-term relationship with the historic theater.

The Joffrey Ballet, which lost its long-term contract to perform as the Los Angeles Music Center’s resident dance company earlier this year due to financial difficulties, announced Thursday that it has signed a contract to perform at the Wiltern Theatre next spring.

The Joffrey’s agreement with the Wiltern and its management company, Bill Graham Presents, also includes “mutually developing” rehearsal and office space on the ground floor of the 2,300-seat Art Deco theater at the intersection of Wilshire and Western.

While the Joffrey calls its contract with the Wiltern a new Los Angeles “residency,” Joffrey executive director Robert Yesselman explained at a news conference at the Wiltern Thursday that the Joffrey has only signed an agreement to perform at the theater May 8-June 7, 1992. He said the company hopes to develop a future arrangement of three years or longer but no contracts have been signed to that effect.

Yesselman also said that the Joffrey will present itself at the Wiltern, rather than sharing expenses with the Wiltern as it did with the Music Center. Yesselman estimated the cost of the Joffrey’s spring engagement at the Wiltern will be between $1.25 million and $1.5 million.

The Joffrey, previously announced to perform its “Nutcracker” at the Music Center Dec. 18-29, has yet to determine whether it will perform the work in subsequent years at either the Music Center or the Wiltern.

Despite financial troubles which led to an internal battle for control of the company two years ago and eventually the Joffrey’s split with the Music Center, Yesselman said “the company at this moment is not in debt. I am very happy to say we closed our fiscal year on June 30, 1991, with quite a significant operational surplus.”

He said the Joffrey carries an accumulated debt which he acknowledged is larger than $300,000, but he said that debt is not in the form of “unpaid bills or debts, it is almost entirely in the form of a challenge loan that we have to match 3 to 1, and we have already matched a significant portion of it.”

The Joffrey, which had been the Music Center’s resident company since 1983, performed its last engagement as the resident troupe last spring. The company was informed March 4 that its contract with the Music Center would be terminated June 30 because the company was unable to prove good financial health.

The Joffrey run at the Wiltern will include a re-creation of Leonide Massine’s “Les Presages.”