Heir to the Legacy : Dance: Judith Jamison has successfully guided the Alvin Ailey troupe through rough times since his death in 1989. It begins a five-day engagement at UCLA tonight.

Even when seated behind a desk piled high with papers awaiting her attention, Judith Jamison remains an elegant, regal figure. The desk once belonged to Alvin Ailey, whose popular, versatile 30-member dance company is now under Jamison’s direction. A celebrated and distinctive leading member of the troupe from 1965 to 1980 and a close friend and trusted associate of Ailey’s after she branched out into other arenas, Jamison was the logical--perhaps inevitable--heir to his legacy, and she was named artistic director three weeks after his death in December, 1989.

She has steered the company through the dual challenge of a transition period and a trying time for dance in general. Now marking its 35th anniversary, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is one of the busiest, most widely viewed companies around, with a touring schedule that others must envy. That schedule takes it to UCLA for a five-day, seven-performance engagement beginning tonight, and to the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts April 20-21.

A huge wall calendar, with each week into the autumn months filled with markings, hangs behind Jamison’s desk and testifies to the company’s far-flung activities. In the Manhattan office between stops on the current national tour, Jamison spoke with calm authority and a strong sense of purpose as she discussed the company’s recent development and plans for the anniversary year. As she ranged through the organization’s many projects, the ideals and interests of her longtime mentor were repeatedly invoked.

When she first took over, Jamison spoke of wanting “to continue Alvin’s dream but also infuse that dream so that the company does not stay in the same place.” That theme of continuity--a fidelity to Ailey’s goals--remains the focus of the company’s current repertory and offstage ventures. Jamison speaks warmly of the farsighted groundwork done by Ailey.

“He left us so much to work with, and the organization is all about sustaining Alvin’s legacy. His whole vision of dance was that it was an important part of your life, that the theater of dance and the art of dance--the humanity of it all--was very important to him, and to me. I think audiences have understood that. The Ailey company always had the responsibility for opening doors, for making it an obsolete idea that dance is an elitist form.”

The company’s roster is dominated by dancers who have joined under Jamison’s tenure, including several who performed with the Jamison Project, a repertory ensemble she led before merging it into the Ailey ranks when she assumed her current position. There are also veteran dancers who have helped shape the company’s profile over the years--Sarita Allen, Marilyn Banks and Dudley Williams, the ageless senior member.

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Jamison has kept all these dancers busy and challenged with a healthy dose of new, diverse repertory as well as attentive revivals of significant Ailey pieces. The UCLA repertory includes the local premieres of Billy Wilson’s “The Winter in Lisbon” and Donald Byrd’s “Dance at the Gym,” as well as the local company premiere of “Shelter” by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, several revivals and a highlights program of “Ailey Classics.”

“The Winter in Lisbon,” which premiered last December, originated with a phone call Jamison received from the late Dizzy Gillespie, who pointed out that nobody had choreographed a dance to his music. Would she be interested?

After she recovered from her surprise, Jamison began listening to various Gillespie recordings. “As I thought about Dizzy’s music, Billy Wilson came to mind, because I knew he understood the eras of the music--the coolness, the hipness, the sultry, sensuous way of moving.” Wilson, whose “Concerto in F” is an Ailey repertory mainstay and who was worked on many Broadway shows, selected music Gillespie composed for a 1991 Portuguese film, “The Winter in Lisbon,” as well as his vintage “Manteca.”

Gillespie was already ill at the time the dance was being created and did not get to see it; he died three weeks after its premiere.

“The good part of it is that he was alive when we were celebrating him and it was done with his blessing. I’m really happy about that,” Jamison remarks.

“Dance at the Gym” is the second work Byrd has choreographed for the Ailey troupe, and he has since created a third. He directs his own group as part of New York’s “downtown” scene, and is known for an edgy, at times confrontational style. “I love his work,” Jamison says simply, and she clearly relishes the technical challenges Byrd has offered the dancers in his works.

“It’s always wonderful for a choreographer to have a relationship with a company’s dancers, so that he can come back and doesn’t have to explain himself from the beginning; they already have the vocabulary.

“I consider him ‘next generation,’ and there’s room for these choreographers in this company’s repertory. We can pay tribute to Alvin’s peers, such as Louis Johnson (whose “Fontessa and Friends” will be danced this week) and do Alvin’s classic works but also look to the future.”

“Shelter,” which Zollar created for her own Urban Bush Women troupe, captivated Jamison when she first saw it and proved to be a rich vehicle for the women of the Ailey company. It is a stark, angry work that deals aggressively with the subject of homelessness. “Alvin always loved to have work in the repertory that was a reflection of what was going on in the world. ‘Shelter’ has something to say. The challenge for our dancers is to incorporate all the techniques they have studied, because our repertory is so diverse in technique and style.”

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An accumulated deficit is being whittled down and is expected to be eliminated by September; for the current fiscal year the company is operating in the black. Its adaptability to a variety of performing venues and its reputation for attracting sizable, diverse audiences make the Ailey troupe popular among those who book tours, both nationally and abroad. The company performs as many weeks annually as the much larger New York City Ballet, and its four-week self-presented New York season is the longest of any non-ballet company in the city--and it reliably breaks even.

The anniversary year will see a revival of Ailey’s “The Mooche” and new works by Jamison (collaborating with playwright Anna Deveare Smith) and Garth Fagan, as well as, Jamison promises, “some surprises.”

In November, her autobiography (Jacqueline Onassis, who suggested the project, is the editor) will be published.

“It should be a very upbeat book as opposed to the True Confessions or whatever people are doing now which I think is so awful,” Jamison promises.

Jamison herself is a distinctly upbeat presence, and she is clearly stimulated and inspired by the demands of running a dance company in a less than hospitable time for the arts, of “wearing 20 hats” as the job requires. “I’m so proud to be working with these dancers and this organization,” she enthuses. “I call it my job, but it’s really a labor of love.”