Kennedy Center Takes Steps to Ensure Growth of Ballet : Dance: Regional troupes get new ballets in a program in which the expenses of creating and rehearsing are covered and the works get high-profile premieres.

Imagine you are the artistic director of a sizable ballet company, making a wish list of projects you would like to see your troupe undertake. There is a well-known choreographer whose work you admire, with whom you would love to give your dancers the opportunity to work and whose choreography would be a welcome variety to your repertory. You envision inviting this choreographer to create an original ballet, and, while you are wishing, you envision how nice it would be if all the expenses of creating and rehearsing the new ballet were covered from the outset and that it would be even nicer if the work was guaranteed a high-profile premiere.

For six American ballet companies, that wish has been granted, courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. At a time when the budgets of ballet troupes are being squeezed, when maintenance rather than risk-taking creativity tends to be the norm, the Kennedy Center established a program through which new works are entering the repertories of Ballet West and the Boston, Houston, Pacific Northwest, Pennsylvania and San Francisco ballets. Scheduled to debut over a four-year period, these ballets are being created at no financial risk to the companies, with the Kennedy Center shouldering the fund-raising responsibility.

Each new ballet is being presented during a Kennedy Center engagement and subsequently entering each company’s repertory in its home city. The primary funding is in the form of a $450,000 challenge grant to the Kennedy Center from the National Endowment for the Arts; it must be matched on a 3-to-1 basis. The project was blessed with an especially auspicious launching in June, 1991, with the premiere of Paul Taylor’s well-received “Company B” by the Houston Ballet. That production now becomes the first of the Kennedy Center commissions to reach Los Angeles when the Houston Ballet performs it as part of a five-day engagement beginning Wednesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Sheldon Schwartz, the Kennedy Center’s administrator for artistic programming, is the mastermind behind the project, which is a logical outgrowth of his dedication to presenting major American ballet companies at the center. In the last decade, these six troupes have appeared frequently on the Kennedy Center’s subscription series, which programs them side-by-side with major international companies.

“We had established a relationship with these companies over the years, and it’s been very healthy both for us and for them,” Schwartz said. “But, frankly, I looked around and felt that the ballet repertory is lacking, and I thought that we--as the national center for the performing arts--should be active in stimulating this repertory.”

The plan Schwartz devised offers maximum potential for all six companies as well as the Kennedy Center. In addition to the ballet it premieres, each troupe can take into its repertory any--or all--of the other five commissioned works. Through this exchange of repertory, Schwartz hopes “to make this choreography available to as many companies as possible, thereby stimulating the repertory, challenging the companies’ dancers and providing opportunity to American creators.”

The project’s requirements stipulate that the choreographer, composer and designer of each ballet will be American. Following “Company B,” which is set to vintage 1940s recordings by the Andrews Sisters, the second commissioned ballet to be unveiled was John Neumeier’s “Age of Anxiety,” set to the Leonard Bernstein score of the same name, which the Salt Lake City-based Ballet West introduced last October. Next came Lar Lubovitch’s “American Gesture,” set to various Charles Ives compositions, which had a January premiere by Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet. That work is also in the repertory of Lubovitch’s own modern-dance company, and Taylor’s troupe has been performing “Company B” since last fall. (The Taylor company will present the work at UCLA and the Orange County Performing Arts Center this fall.)

Still to come are a Twyla Tharp work for Boston Ballet, and as-yet undetermined choreographer’s creations for San Francisco Ballet and the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Ballet. Schwartz describes himself as the “marriage broker,” matching choreographers with companies. And he stresses that unlike other, more developmental programs that aim to encourage new work, his is not a program for emerging choreographers. “An important element is that the work be of the highest artistic standard. All of the choreographers are well-known and established.”

Now at the halfway mark, the Kennedy Center’s commissioning project has clearly served its intended purpose of enriching the contemporary ballet repertory and enhancing the reputation of the participating companies.

In addition to serving as facilitator for a wealth of creativity, the Kennedy Center is consolidating its role as the primary presenter of these national companies outside their home cities. They rarely, if ever, perform in New York, where they must self-produce seasons at great financial risk and where the prevailing taste tends to be for foreign imports.

For the Houston Ballet, “Company B” has been a source of “extraordinary national recognition,” reports executive director Gary Dunning. The visibility of the Kennedy Center premiere spurred that recognition, he explained: “We were viewed by major papers that don’t usually come to Houston, and that was coverage that attracts the attention of our funders. It was a tremendous step up, in terms of validation.”