O.C. DANCE : Ballet Meets Ballroom in Peterson Piece

To the lyric, haunting slow movement of Britten’s Piano Concerto, four women stretch leisurely into graceful arabesques. But as the score changes seamlessly from music-box delicacy to ominous, full-throated conflict, four men bound into the space, and the women hurry out.

Kirk Peterson looks on as members of Ballet Pacifica rehearse his work-in-progress as part of the Laguna Beach troupe’s “Pacifica Choreographic Project,” an annual workshop that brings choreographers to town to develop new pieces with the company. Peterson’s and three other works-in-progress--by Mark Haim, Monica Levy and Billy Siegenfeld--will be danced Saturday night at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.

Danced by six women and four men, Peterson’s ballet has a built-in asymmetrical quality because, he says, “there are two women in it who don’t have men to dance with.” Instead of trying to exploit the dramatic possibilities of that imbalance, the 42-year-old choreographer says he is focusing on structural and abstract relationships. “I look at the work from a very technical point of view,” he says, “from more abstract emotional sensibilities as opposed to specific ones.”

He’s using two of the concerto’s four movements, this one and a waltz in which he is trying to marry classical ballet vocabulary and ballroom dancing, “to see how it works. So much of ballet partnering is presenting the woman in front of the man, as an icon,” he notes. “In ballroom dancing, people dance face to face.”

Peterson is perhaps best known for having danced with the American Ballet Theatre from 1974 to 1980. So great was his prowess that he was the very first dancer after Mikhail Baryshnikov to be cast in the lead of Twyla Tharp’s “Push Comes to Shove.”

But when Baryshnikov took over as the company’s artistic director, they had a major falling out, and Peterson was fired.

“Essentially, he was going to limit my repertory,” Peterson asserts. “He was going to limit me, at the peak of my career. That was absurd to me. . . . My biggest strength was that I was versatile. I could do anything.”

Suddenly on his own, the young dancer thought about trying to join the New York City Ballet or the Joffrey Ballet. But then Michael Smuin, then co-artistic director (with Lew Christensen) of the San Francisco Ballet, extended an invitation.

“I first asked him if I could choreograph,” Peterson recalls. “He said, ‘Well, we have a resident choreographers’ program, so this is the company for you.’ That really lured me there.”

Peterson joined San Francisco in 1981 and stayed until Smuin was fired in 1984. “I had a fabulous time there,” Peterson says. “I had a huge eclectic repertoire, and every resident choreographer in the company used me. I probably had a more fertile time than at ABT.”

He decided to return to New York because, apart from the San Francisco Ballet, there were few options for dancing in the Bay Area. He found that re-establishing himself in the Big Apple was extremely difficult.

“When your specialty is ballet choreography, if you’re not involved with a company on a regular basis, it’s very difficult, which is why I cultivated my teaching and coaching.” He took jobs as they came up, working with Smuin on a Broadway revival of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” in 1986 and later as co-choreographer of a Broadway production of “Shogun, the Musical.”

Meanwhile, he created works for the Washington (D.C.) Ballet, BalletMet (in Ohio) and the Pacific Northwest Ballet, among other companies. He currently free-lances, and teaches at the prestigious David Howard Dance Center in New York.

Does the former firebrand miss dancing? “Oh, God, no, no, I don’t miss it,” he answers. “Occasionally I miss performing. (But) being a dancer is like being an athlete: Your body tells you, when you’re around 35, that you have to slow down. If I were still associated with a company, still in ABT, I’d be doing only smaller roles anyway.”

* Works-in-progress by Kirk Peterson, Mark Haim, Monica Levy and Billy Siegenfeld will be danced Saturday at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, as part of Ballet Pacifica’s “Pacifica Choreographic Project ’92.” Curtain: 8 p.m. $5. (714) 642-9275.