Modern Dance: Getting a Foot in Center’s Door

Before the centennial “Nutcracker” ballet festivities grab too much attention, let’s take a few moments to cheer and reflect on the first appearance of the Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, last weekend.

Modern dance--indeed, modern work of any kind--generally has taken a back seat at the center. Prior to the Taylor company’s appearance, only the Martha Graham Company appeared in Segerstrom Hall as part of a regular dance subscription series, and it was offered only as an option.

True, the Bella Lewitzky and Erich Hawkins companies made brief appearances, but those were under special circumstances, as Imagination Celebration events.

And that’s been it.

One has to wonder about the center’s obligation to expand an audience’s range of interest.

How much of a box office risk should the hall be asked to take? The “Nutcracker” certainly isn’t much of a risk. There’ll be 232 productions in the United States this year, expected to bring in more than $45 million in box office, according to the current issue of Dance Magazine (see accompanying story). The Dance Heritage Coalition estimates that “Nutcrackers” provide “more than a third of the earned income of many U.S. dance companies.”

Dance Magazine editor Richard Philp actually begs parents to take their kids to other ballets when they want to introduce them to the form. In the “Nutcracker,” Philp writes, “dance is seriously misrepresented as lightweight entertainment primarily for children (‘children of all ages,’ if you wish, but children ) and dancers are perceived as eccentrics who live permanently in kingdoms of fudge and lollipops.”

To be sure, modern dance companies draw smaller audiences than ballet companies do (although the Taylor Company averaged a respectable 62% paid attendance for two dates, for a total gross of $116,961, according to a center spokesman).

Still, why is it that full-sized, established modern dance companies--we’re not even talking about the experimental troupes--such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and works by such other interesting modern dance choreographers as Alvin Nikolais, Laura Dean, Bill T. Jones, Jose Limon, Mark Morris . . . you fill in the blanks . . . cannot be seen in what supposedly is the county’s world-class performing space?

Modern dance is just the beginning of things the center could explore. The Orange County Philharmonic Society sponsored the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico last month and the performance was a sellout. Hundreds had to be turned away at the doors.

Let’s hope the center casts its own net wider with its future series, even in these recessionary times.