Going ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’ : Touring: Dance Theatre of Harlem is in the middle of a South African stint. Others have canceled tours after facing the reality of dealing with the still fractious society.

Paul Simon’s decision to perform in South Africa last January led to a major headache for the singer when a radical left-wing youth group opposed the tour for political reasons.

Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov canceled his dance company’s tour here after the June massacre of more than 40 people in the black township of Boipatong. In fact, a number of performers have announced tours only to cancel as they confront the reality of doing business in this still fractious society.

But Arthur Mitchell, the founder and artistic director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, whose troupe arrived Monday for a three-week visit, says he has had no second thoughts about coming.

“Dance Theatre of Harlem is always going where angels fear to tread,” said Mitchell, who arrived in South Africa about two weeks ago to lay the groundwork for the visit of his 49-member troupe. “We might as well try this.”

If Mitchell’s tone is lighthearted, it belies the amount of work that it took to make the visit happen. Approval was necessary from a myriad of groups, including liberation organizations such as the African National Congress, unions--and there are many of them--as well as an array of other cultural groups.

Early private sponsorship for the visit, the high point of which will be the opening of the city’s renovated Civic Theater, was lost when local cultural groups questioned whether Dance Theatre of Harlem was a big enough name to warrant the support.

Once people were reassured “we weren’t bringing in some has-been, which I think South Africa has been used to” they regained support, said Christopher Till, who heads the city of Johannesburg’s cultural department.

But as those difficulties were ironed out, he said, the changing political situation and the ongoing violence in the black townships began to play a role. The announcement of the visit was canceled two times. First, because of the Boipatong massacre and then because of the days of mourning.

Once the announcement got the go-ahead, the company’s advance team had to delay its arrival because of the mass action planned by the ANC and aligned organizations, who wanted to bring pressure on the government to end the ongoing political violence that has claimed thousands of lives.

In addition, the visit, which is costing $1.1 million of predominantly private money, has raised the ire of some South African dancers who believe that the funds would have been better spent invested in existing companies and projects in the country.

“What we’ve heard is basically, ‘How is it possible to spend this while we have people like the Dance Alliance (a local dance organization) that can present similar type of work. You could save about 90% of the money . . . and create jobs within,” said a high-ranking official of the Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal.

Dance Theatre of Harlem backers dispute such claims. They cite Mitchell’s extensive community outreach programs as one of the primary reasons the troupe was invited in the first place. Indeed, one of the requirements the ANC and other liberation organizations insist on for visiting arts groups is that they do workshops for the underprivileged. Mitchell and dance theater members will be doing more than 30 workshops, many of them in the black townships, during their visit.

Mitchell, who was invited more than two years ago by the progressive Market Theater, has also pledged to begin a scholarship and apprenticeship program for South African dancers to study at the Dance Theatre of Harlem school in New York, if there is money remaining at the end of the tour. People who participate in the apprenticeship program must agree to return to South Africa and teach for a year.

But aside from such commitments, performance organizers say Mitchell can provide an important role model at this juncture in South Africa, where during four decades of apartheid life was dictated by skin color. The son of a Harlem janitor, who supported his family since the age of 12, Mitchell was the first black to become a major figure in ballet.

After years of dancing with the New York City Ballet, he started his own company in a Harlem garage and has taken his critically heralded show around the world.

“They (the Dance Theatre) have come out of an underprivileged community,” said Till. “I think there’s a lesson in that for South Africa. It’s going to give a lot of people a lot of hope as to what can be achieved from very humble beginnings.”