New Ballet Faces Tough Subjects

Rick McCullough’s new “No Less Than Every,” one of three premieres that open Ballet Pacifica’s 30th season this weekend at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, doesn’t flinch from some tough subjects: death and mourning.

The piece is dedicated to McCullough’s friend Edward Stierle, the 22-year-old Joffrey Ballet dancer who died of complications of AIDS in 1991. The two met while Stierle was a student at the North Carolina School of the Arts.

But the choreographer does not describe the piece as “a testimony to victims of AIDS.”

The music for the piece is a chamber orchestration of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, which the composer wrote “in memory of victims of fascism and war,” according to the dedication.

“The pathos and poignancy in this piece are very obvious,” McCullough said in a recent phone interview from his home in Winston-Salem, N.C. “Not only could he say ‘victims of fascism,’ but victims of any kind of totalitarianism, which he was himself certainly subject to. I chose that music because it really moved me.”

The work is for 10 dancers: four men and six women. “My final implication is that one cannot necessarily be defeated by the idea of death conquering us, as John Donne wrote, ‘Death be not proud,’ because we ultimately cling to each other and even, when we all do succumb, we succumb as individuals, yes, but also as a race or as a family.

“That was my message of comfort at the end. It ends rather, I would say, peacefully. It resolves not harmoniously, but with peace.”

In dedicating the work to Stierle, McCullough said: “Eddie just had to face everyone’s fate sooner than most of us. . . . He had great talent as a dancer and great potential as a choreographer.”

Stierle danced as a guest for Ballet Pacifica in 1989. That was the same year the Laguna Beach-based company also danced McCullough’s “By Lamplight,” but that work was created for the North Carolina Dance Theater.

McCullough, 41, was born in Lynwood and grew up in Downey. As a kid he danced for Ballet Pacifica when company founder Lila Zali was still calling it the Laguna Beach Civic Ballet.

He remembers that current artistic director Molly Lynch was “just a little girl then, younger than me by five or six years. L.A. County was dairy farms and orange groves.”

McCullough attended high school in Huntington Beach but left before graduating to study at the North Carolina arts school. He met his wife, Susan, there, and after graduating, they both joined the Harkness Ballet in Pennsylvania, where they danced from 1971-75. They went on to dance at the Netherlands Dance Theatre from 1975-84.

He began to choreograph while in the Netherlands. But his first efforts were “were enormous flops,” he said. “After one performance, one person said ‘Bravo.’ One person booed. The rest were polite, and the critics were hideous. I didn’t ask for any more chances in the Netherlands.”

McCullough said that the problem was that he was overwhelmed by the presence of such big-name choreographers as Jiri Kylian, William Forsythe, Glen Tetley and Hans van Manen, who were working with the company. “Not until I left could I dissociate me from those masters, relax and do what was me,” he said. “I really didn’t know who I was as a choreographer.”

But after returning to the United States in 1984, he began to find himself. He worked at the Carlisle Project, a choreographic workshop created that year in Pennsylvania, and that helped him “learn some skills and refine my eye.” It worked: He won the gold medal and $3,000 in the Boston International Choreography Competition in 1990, and the silver medal and about $4,000 in the Tokyo International Competition a year later.

He’s now teaching at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His wife is dean of dance at the North Carolina School of the Arts. “University policy precludes hiring of a spouse as faculty,” he said. “So being married to Susan divorces me from my alma mater.”

When he choreographs, he allows the music to dictate the movement. “A lot of it creates the movement I make,” he said. “I’m not searching for any literal statement, but allowing whatever movement the music tells me to come out of me. If it fits in the overall thing, I do it.”

* Rick McCullough’s new “No Less Than Every” will be danced by Ballet Pacifica on Friday at 8 p.m. and on Saturday at 2:30 and 8:30 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Other premieres include “Refracted Accumulations” by Kirk Peterson and “Different Trains” by Molly Lynch. The program is dedicated to Gloria Newman. $12 to $15. (714) 854-4646.