The Globe’s Their Home : * Dance: The Malashock troupe’s new agreement with the Old Globe means it will be dancing on home turf.

Even dance companies like to have a place to call home.

Malashock Dance & Company, the five-member contemporary-dance troupe headed by choreographer John Malashock, opens its sixth season tonight on what may become the company’s home stage--the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park.

“It’s a biggie for us,” Malashock said of his company’s new arrangement with the Globe. “I’ve been eyeing that theater for a while now, wanting to get into a higher caliber theater space, but not getting into one that’s so huge it becomes inappropriate for the company. The size of the house--still on something of an intimate scale--is just right for us, and the stage facilities are very good.”

Taking on the overhead obligations of a studio and office space is a scary enough proposition for a dance company, Malashock acknowledged. Finding a fitting performance space--one that has enough (or not too many) seats for expected ticket buyers--requires a combination of guts and patience. Malashock hopes to fill the 580-seat theater four nights running for this completely self-produced event.

For concerts, most small troupes rove from one venue to the next, to theaters that lack technical capacity and sight lines ideal for dance performances, or places that lack even the basics, such as running water. And few companies, large or small, can afford the financial blow caused by ambitiously booking a too-big house.

Such has been the plight of Malashock’s company, which has moved about over the past six years, appearing most recently at Sherwood Auditorium--sponsored by Sushi Performance Gallery--and before that at the Lyceum Theatre in Horton Plaza. Last year’s annual budget was just $125,000. “We’re growing pretty steadily, but we’re still on a shoestring compared to other organizations,” Malashock said. Nevertheless, with the Globe, he has landed what might be considered a “big” deal.

“I went and talked with Tom Hall (managing director of the Globe) about the possibility of their opening up the space to us,” Malashock explained. “He was very receptive to the idea and worked to negotiate the arrangement with the feeling that it will serve both organizations well. It’s certainly a great plus for us. We’ll have access to a lot more people than we could reach on our own.”

For the concerts, Malashock is offering a reduced admission to the thousands of Globe subscribers he has reached by working with the Globe’s publicity department.

Malashock made no secret of his desire for this Malashock-Globe “collaboration,” as he called it, to be a continuing one, but added that “we both obviously will want to wait and see how things go.”

From the Globe’s perspective, Tom Hall said, “We see a potential for a long-term arrangement. A lot will depend on their ability to continue the relationship,” referring to what he called the current “precarious nature of the arts” and the survival of arts organizations.

The Globe has provided space to several performing arts groups over the years, Hall said, such as Mainly Mozart, which used the Festival Stage for concerts before moving to the Spreckels Theater last year. And on an ad hoc basis, Hall says, the Globe has welcomed a variety of what Hall calls “viable”community groups of “singular artistic merit,” such as Malashock’s company, and will continue to do so, depending on theater availability.

“We offer a state-of-the-art theater with great community visibility. For an artist like John, the theater offers a greater breadth of expression.”

Having a more sophisticated performance space will affect his work, Malashock believes. “I’ll definitely take the steps to do certain kinds of work that involve technical things. I have some pieces in mind that involve scenery, which really would take a well-equipped stage. Even for this concert, I’m doing a piece that involves a backdrop and a set piece.”

The dance, called “Where the Arrow Landed,” uses an 18-by-18-foot backdrop based on a painting by Michigan artist Pamela DeLaura. The painting was the “initial spark of motivation for the dance,” according to Malashock. “It set a very particular kind of tone or mood, so that it gave me some place to start.” Company members Greg Lane, Loni Palladino, Debi Toth, and Maj Xander, with guest dancer Carol Mead, perform to five segments of music by Villa Lobos, for a “very atmospheric emotional piece,” he said.

“Some elements in it are quite bizarre and comic, and others border on the tragic, and yet the piece has something of a somber tone to it. The underlying theme is one of waiting for something to happen, looking for something strong inside. It doesn’t have a story line in the sense that some of the other works do, like ‘Apologies from the Lower Deck.’ ”

“Apologies,” which had its premiere at Sherwood Auditorium last May in a Sushi presentation, includes a narrative spoken by an actor. “It’s a weird story, but it’s a story,” Malashock laughed.

“Unfortunate Names,” first performed in 1990, completes the program, which repeats each night through Sunday.

“Unfortunate Names” is “very much a character piece, really dealing with sketches of dance characters tearing away the outer layers and looking inside,” Malashock explained. “In this concert we are working by far in the widest range of emotions, all the way from comedy to tragedy. That’s been the direction of my work--the human emotions--but to take in the whole spectrum. Drama, that sense of interaction or of exposing something from inside of people, will always continue to be my fascination with dance.”

And a fascination with theater. From his descriptions, Malashock reveals a theatrical bent. And he presents himself in a poised, controlled voice, reminiscent of a stage actor. He became involved in dance largely because of a love for theater, he said, a love that began when he acted in high school and college productions.

“I’ve always loved theater that bridges the whole spectrum of what people feel. Something that’s one dimensional--all pain or all comedy--has always struck me as not very real.

“My love for theater is part of what feels so good to me about this situation at the Globe. The Globe audiences who will come to (our program) will appreciate it. It won’t be like seeing a completely different art form.”

Malashock Dance & Company performs at the Old Globe Theater at 8 p.m. tonight through Sunday. Tickets are $16 general admission; $12 for dance company members, Globe subscribers, and students. Call the Old Globe at 239-2255 or the Malashock Dance office at 298-3304 for tickets or more information .