Dance Presenters Give It Another Whirl : Culture: Trustees of the financially endangered Foundation for Performing Arts grant the group 12 more days of life.

The trustees of the financially endangered San Diego Foundation for Performing Arts have given themselves 12 more days to raise an $75,000 more to save the dance foundation’s life.

“I just couldn’t walk away from it, and the board wasn’t willing to either,” an emotional Fred Colby, executive director of the foundation, said Friday evening following the board’s decision to delay closing.

With a $1.4-million annual budget and a decade-long history of bringing major international dance companies to downtown San Diego, the company was to have folded Friday if $200,000 of its $265,000 deficit was not eliminated, according to a deadline announced Oct. 6 by Colby.

But, despite having raised a total of just $53,000 through a benefit concert and more than 400 donations, Colby said the fight for survival will continue until Oct. 28, and the remaining amount needed has been reduced to $75,000.

“Through a combination of the funds raised to date, reductions in expenses, and elimination of some other debts, we have been able to reduce the amount needed to continue on with the season from the $200,000 amount I gave 2 weeks ago, to $75,000,” Colby said.

He would not clarify how debts were being eliminated and what expenses had been reduced.

In fact, though he had previously announced that all of his eight-member staff had been given severance notices two weeks ago, Colby would not say Friday whether any of the staff had been laid off. Board members deferred to Colby as their sole spokesman.

Founded in 1982 by arts patron Danah Fayman, who has long been a strong advocate for presenting arts downtown as a way of building the city’s urban center, the foundation has presented 45 of the best-known international dance companies downtown, including the Kirov Ballet, Martha Graham, Joffrey Ballet, Merce Cunningham and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.

Yet the foundation has suffered financially from the perception that Fayman would always be there to bail it out, said Colby, who is Fayman’s son.

“People keep presuming that Danah can pick up the check. She’s done it for 10 years, she’s given over $1.5 million. But this is not Sol Price. This is Danah Fayman giving all of her resources, and she can’t do it anymore.”

Colby said that he was heartened by the benefit performance by the Lyon Opera Ballet on Tuesday night, which was offered as a rescue mission by the French company, despite the fact that, just two weeks ago, it had performed for three nights to half-empty houses at the San Diego Civic Theatre.

The Tuesday performance only half-filled the Spreckels Theatre, but audiences were galvanized to support the foundation, Colby said.

“For the first time, the community began to take some ownership of the institution,” Colby said. “I’ve never seen our audiences as animated as they were that evening.”

Since the crisis began, community support for the endangered foundation has been “overwhelming,” Colby said, with hundreds of donations in small amounts, ranging from $10 to $100, pouring in daily.

The largest donations to date have been two of $2,500 and one of $2,000, Colby said. Letters of support from such dance notables as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Paul Taylor have also boosted the board’s commitment to continue, Colby said.

“The most classic was a letter that came in from Lar Lubovitch,” Colby said of the New York dancer whose company was presented by the foundation in 1988. “His company is in financial trouble, but he sent me a personal check for $100.”

Believing that the fate of the local dance community and the national tours for some companies would be jeopardized by a decision to close, Colby said his board was unwilling to leave any potential source of income unexplored.

“After what’s gone on at this point, I’d hate to not ask people to give and have them say later, ‘You didn’t ask me,’ ” Colby said.

The endangered upcoming season includes the Mark Morris Dance Group, Nov. 17-18; the Kodo Drummers, Jan. 29-31; the Paul Taylor Dance Co., Feb. 26-27, and the Miami City Ballet, April 23-24. Colby said he hopes that the Morris company performances will go on, but he said that will not be determined until the Oct. 28 deadline.