Gymnasts Try to Bounce Back After Troubled U.S. Tour Fails : Entertainment: The New Moscow Dance Theatre’s U.S. tour ended almost as soon as it began. Now the troupe is rehearsing again and hoping to achieve its dream.

They were told they would perform their flashy Russian spectacle at major venues across the United States for an entire year.

Promises of five-star hotels, big-money backers and packed theaters in the land of capitalism kept them pushing through six months of grueling rehearsals in a gym in Latvia, part of the former Soviet Union.

But their one-year dream tour began--and ended--in Torrance.

After seven poorly attended shows in that city’s new performing arts center, the German producer who had promised them fame and fortune in America disappeared, abandoning the troupe of 22 young women gymnasts and one actor/writer with no money, no future bookings and no knowledge of English.

Now scattered among the homes of sympathetic Russian friends in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, the New Moscow Dance Theatre has begun rehearsing again, confident that they can rebuild their shattered dream.

“I had previously been told that everyone in America lives by himself and for himself,” said Anatoli Ioda, general director of Riga Concert Assn., part of the joint venture that brought the troupe here. “But we’ve met good people here with heart, compassion and understanding. We can make this work.”

First they will have to clear a few American legal hurdles.

A week after the troupe members last saw their producer, Robert Schedel, their newly hired American lawyers were told that Schedel filed grand theft reports against them with both Torrance and Los Angeles police departments for keeping costumes and props he says belong to him.

Police said they are investigating but may decide that the case is a civil, not a criminal, matter.

The performers believe that Schedel has no claim to costumes and props because he walked out on the tour. They complain that Schedel never returned videos, photographs, brochures, flyers and other promotional material they need to organize a tour. They also say he ran up thousands of dollars in bills in the troupe’s name but never paid the performers.

Schedel did not respond to interview requests made to him through friends.

Russian and arts community members who have seen the group perform praise members’ athletic ability, creativity and flair.

“To say that they’re worth saving is an understatement,” said Jeffrey Haas, a film editor at Russian Television in Los Angeles. “They’re a bit Broadway, a bit cabaret, a bit Busby Berkeley. . . . It’s a musical revue based on the life of Rasputin, but it’s been turned into a musical stage revue. . . . It’s just an incredible show.”

Lawyer James Clemons and his partner, Mary Stearns, who speaks fluent Russian, are trying to help the troupe--made up of former Soviet artistic gymnastics champions--get back on its feet.

Clemons said Ioda found him and Stearns through the Russian Yellow Pages and called them after the troupe had completed its first few performances at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center early in May.

“Essentially, my client began to smell a rat,” Clemons said, when Schedel failed to provide details of the tour’s itinerary after Torrance and also refused to tell troupe members where he was staying in Los Angeles.

Ioda told Clemons that Schedel had first proposed taking the show on the American road after the performers completed a run of 150 performances before audiences as large as 6,000 people in their homeland.

After six months of rehearsals, costume upgrades and struggling with bureaucratic red tape in five former Soviet republics, the troupe was ready to travel and awaiting a telephone call from Schedel in the United States telling them that the tour plans were ready.

Schedel, who had promised first-class hotels and major financial backing, called in late April and told troupe members to come to Los Angeles. They arrived May 3 and gave their first performance May 8 in Torrance. But the local Russian community, based largely in the Fairfax area, could not travel that far to attend the group’s performances.

By the seventh and last show on May 17, however, the theater was about half-filled by an American audience.

“They gave us a standing ovation,” said Ilya Reznik, who wrote the script and songs and performs as Rasputin. “I had a lump in my throat. . . . I am very thankful for the interest of the American people.”

The next day, however, the troupe’s burgeoning hopes were crushed.

A bus Schedel said he had chartered to take troupe members to their next venue in Palo Alto failed to arrive at their downtown Los Angeles hotel at 9 a.m.

As the day wore on, the troupe heard nothing from Schedel as they waited anxiously in the hotel’s lobby. In the late afternoon, the hotel impounded members’ luggage, telling them their $10,000 lodging bill had not been paid.

Ioda asked Clemons and Stearns to come help.

“We get there and we’ve got 22 wailing Russian girls, two of whom are minors, who haven’t eaten for 24 hours, who have nowhere to go and who don’t know a word of English,” Clemons said.

Schedel, who had gone to Torrance to pick up the $7,832 in door receipts left over after theater expenses, arrived about 7 p.m. and told Clemons he had “about $5,200 on him.”

Hotel officials agreed to release the troupe’s baggage after Schedel gave them about $5,000, Clemons said. Schedel then told Ioda and Reznik that the tour was over and left the hotel.

Clemons and Stearns bought the troupe dinner and put members up for one more night at the hotel, then joined with Russian Television to help find the troupe housing with Russian families all over Los Angeles.

Three days later, Schedel delivered a letter to Ioda at 11 a.m. ordering him to have the troupe at Los Angeles International Airport by 2 p.m. for a flight home.

Ioda refused. No one with the troupe has heard from Schedel since.

“What we want now is to be left alone so we can do our work,” said Olga Morozova, the group’s choreographer and a former Soviet coach of champion artistic gymnasts, who practice a more dance-oriented form of gymnastics.

Ioda and Reznik hope to find a new producer to guide them through the complexities of creating and publicizing a tour itinerary.

Their performers said they are determined not to go home until their work visas expire next spring.

“In America, one needs to work and if one works, one can achieve,” said Ilva Kibare, 21, a Latvian gymnastics champion. “I believe that there is a way out of every situation and that this will work itself out and everything will be fine.”

On Thursday, that work began again in earnest as the group began rehearsing in a hall donated by the Los Angeles School of Gymnastics, whose executive director has been an Olympic coach of artistic gymnasts.

A show has been scheduled at Fairfax High School at 8 p.m. June 13 and discussions are under way for more performances elsewhere, Ioda said.

In bringing the troupe to the United States, “I thought not only of business and profit, but I believed that I was bringing a product of art from Latvia, an artistic entity, to share with the United States,” Ioda said through a Russian interpreter.

“I believed then and I still firmly believe today that the uniqueness of it will be important and a higher thing than just business,” he said. “Now that so many of the stereotypes of the old (Soviet Union) have been destroyed, we have an opportunity to share our culture with America.”