AN APPRECIATION : San Diego’s Support for Dance Just Ran Out of Gas

I remember having to go to Los Angeles almost any time I wanted to see dance. The drive from San Diego took at least two smoggy hours. Performances ended late, so I’d spend the night at the home of friends in Venice, sleeping on a lumpy makeshift bed. To ensure getting good seats, I had bought a series ticket from UCLA, but on some of the Saturdays for which I had tickets, I just couldn’t take the time to get there.

In short, in those days seeing dance was quite a hassle. But getting on the freeway was the only way I could see Merce Cunningham, Alvin Ailey or any other top dance company. In those days, they just didn’t come to San Diego.

All of that changed in 1982, when Danah Fayman founded the San Diego Foundation for Performing Arts. In its first season, the foundation brought in Twyla Tharp, Alvin Ailey, Pilobolus and the Joffrey Ballet.

San Diego had at last entered the major leagues.

During the San Diego Foundation’s 10-year history--which ended Wednesday when Executive Director Fred Colby announced that the foundation had failed to raise the $200,000 it needed to survive--it presented more than 40 major dance companies.

The roster included the biggest names, including the Kirov Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and Martha Graham. To its great credit, the foundation also took chances with lesser known but highly respected troupes, such as Laura Dean, Alwin Nikolais, the David Gordon Pickup Company and ODC of San Francisco.

Not only did the foundation introduce San Diego audiences to the performers it brought to town, it also helped fuel a real maturation of San Diego as a city in which to see dance. While the foundation (and, to a lesser extent, UC San Diego) presented the big, high-ticket companies, Sushi Performance Gallery capably began filling the niche for newer out-of-town troupes such as Kei Takei, Lisa Kraus, Bebe Miller and Ron Brown.

On the local dance scene, Isaacs, McCaleb & Company (formerly Three’s Company), which carried the torch for modern dance on its own for years, was joined by Malashock Dance & Company in 1986.

Just as the Foundation for Performing Arts contributed to an overall growth in dance in San Diego, its loss will reverberate among other dance presenters and dancers themselves.

“It saddens me to think that challenging and brilliant contemporary dance artists like Bill T. Jones, William Forsythe and Mark Morris will not be available to San Diego audiences,” said Lynn Schuette, executive director of Sushi. “It feels like we’re plunging into the dark ages.”

Nancy McCaleb, associate artistic director of Isaacs, McCaleb & Dancers, said it’s been important to have the company’s dancers--and audiences--exposed to the foundation’s programs.

“It enriched the work being done here,” McCaleb said. “My work has flourished, because you can’t do anything in a vacuum.”

Looking back over the decade of dance the San Diego Foundation made possible here, I’ve found half a dozen personal high points--especially vivid memories:

* Laura Dean Dancers & Musicians (March, 1988). I had heard for years about Dean’s Sufi-influenced choreography. It was magical to see her dancers twirling with great concentration across the stage of the Spreckels Theatre.

* “The Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (March, 1991), Bill T. Jones’s evening-length dance performed by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. I’ll never forget Jones’ earnestness during one passage, as he sat on stage with a local minister, Kelvin T. Calloway, and, in an unrehearsed conversation, asked him about his church’s position on homosexuality and AIDS.

* The David Gordon Pickup Company (May, 1989) dancing to a “score” of John McPhee’s gripping account of a family whose house is inundated by a mudslide.

* The Merce Cunningham concert (April, 1987), from which people left during the second intermission. Cunningham’s is one of the longest-lived modern dance troupes in the country, and I am always impressed that after so many years, he has resisted any temptations to make his work highly accessible.

* The simplicity and choreographic brilliance of Martha Graham’s “El Penitente” (March, 1992).

* The extraordinary dancing of the Lyon Opera Ballet at their benefit performance for the San Diego Foundation on Oct. 13. A personal high was seeing the troupe perform a sensual dance choreographed by Ralph Lemon. I’d been hearing about Lemon for some time and was hungry to see some of his work.

Colby said Wednesday that this is it--the foundation will not reopen.

Although UCSD may in future years pick up some of the slack and might even consider presenting some programs downtown, that appears to be extremely unlikely this season, according to Lynne Peterson, director of university events. Part of the problem, Peterson said, is that even if UCSD could afford to pick up the rest of the foundation’s canceled season, the school would receive none of the money the foundation collected from season ticket holders (which will not be refunded). They would have to ask people who have already bought tickets to Mark Morris, Kodo and the rest to pay again.

The demise of the foundation “is a real blow to dance,” Peterson said.. “It’s certainly going to be a factor in our future planning.”

A friend called shortly after I’d received the news about the foundation. We had been looking forward to seeing Mark Morris (scheduled for Nov. 17-18 and now canceled) for months. The first thing we discussed, after bemoaning what had happened to the foundation, was whether the Morris troupe was performing anywhere else in Southern California soon. (They will not, on their current tour.)

But no doubt others will be coming through, most of them probably bypassing San Diego. For those of us who love dance, it appears to be time to get in our cars again.