DANCE : A Look at the Rolodex of Dance : Long a showcase for area artists, ‘Dance Kaleidoscope’ is also a shopping ground for presenters. But does it really show the best?

Imagine the choreographic equivalent of a multi-chapter Chinese restaurant menu. What you’ve got isn’t just a meal, it’s a performing arts pig-out. It’s also a fair approximation of Los Angeles’ premier festival of Southland dance, a.k.a. “Dance Kaleidoscope.”

There are smaller festivals here, including “Dance Roots,” “Prime Moves” and Highways’ annual dance showcase. But there’s no terpsichorean event quite like this one. And certainly none that is growing at such a rate in spite of hard times for arts funding.

“Dance Kaleidoscope,” which opened Friday, presents five different programs during the next two weeks at Cal State L.A.’s State Playhouse and the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre. The event features 40 companies in works that run the gamut from performance art to ballet to jazz, from modern to folk dance.

Artists include such disparate talents as the dance theater duo Blue Palm, modern choreographer Russell Scott and modern company Rose Polsky and Dancers. The world-dance component includes Ballet Folklorico del Pacifico and Keshet Chaim Dance Ensemble. And for the first time “Kaleidoscope” will offer a program designed specifically for children.

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Still, what’s unprecedented about the event is not its scope but its size. Clearly, the number of participants alone demonstrates the variety of indigenous dance.

It also proves that word has gotten out about “Kaleidoscope.” In 1993, 87 individuals and companies auditioned for 27 openings. This year, there were 142 hopefuls for 40 slots.

“Kaleidoscope” Director Don Hewitt, the Cal State L.A. dance faculty member who has overseen the festival since 1989, finds the demand daunting, though not surprising. “It’s scary and good at the same time, because you think, ‘Oh my God. All these people need a place,’ ” he says.

“During the year people call me like an agent,” he says, referring to his reputation as a veritable human Rolodex of information on Southland dance artists. “A lot of (choreographers and dancers) have been discovered here.”

Moreover, in a city that has few affordable venues to present dance, “Kaleidoscope” is widely regarded as an indispensable platform for emerging Southern California choreographers, as well as for some of their more established colleagues.

“It’s the only time of year that you get to see a whole range of dance and the only place the dance community will go to look at other people’s work,” says independent producer Serena Tripi.

In fact, “Kaleidoscope” is a one-stop shop for presenters and others trolling for new talent.

“It’s a great showcase,” says Rachel Cohen, one of the few L.A. concert dance agents and a member of this year’s selection panel. “The general audience goes there to have a night of dance that’s not too expensive. And I go to see what’s new.”

“I urge all emerging companies I know to go there because it’s a good springboard and it’s a chance to get reviewed,” says Cohen, whose clients--Mehmet Sander Dance Company, Winifred R. Harris’ Between Lines and Naomi Goldberg’s Los Angeles Modern Dance and Ballet--all are part of this year’s “Kaleidoscope,” which she helped select.

The Ford Amphitheatre performances are a homecoming of sorts for “Dance Kaleidoscope.” Although in recent years nearly all of the “Kaleidoscope” programs have been staged at Cal State L.A., the festival was launched at the Ford by the now-defunct Los Angeles Area Dance Alliance in 1979.

When the alliance went under in 1985, “Kaleidoscope” went with it. The festival then lay dormant until it was revived at Cal State L.A. in 1989, as a co-presentation of the campus’s department of theater and dance and the city’s Cultural Affairs Department.

Hewitt was the driving force behind the project and has remained so. He says he was simply responding to a need: “Artists were saying that there were no venues. I was teaching at the time and I noticed that during the summer there was nothing happening in the theaters on campus.”

He approached campus officials about the possibility of presenting a dance festival and they responded with interest, if only to the tune of a couple of thousand dollars. Since then, the city has paid for the artists’ honorariums and Cal State L.A. has provided the venue and other in-kind services.

Additional funds--usually about $50,000--need to be raised each year to pay for technical support and other necessities. This year, that money is coming from grants from the National-State-County Partnership for the Arts, the Brody Foundation and the dancewear company Capezio Balletmakers. These monies, plus box-office receipts, constitute the budget.

“Kaleidoscope’s” funding has held relatively steady. Hewitt has been successful in securing and keeping the funding in part because he has sought to upgrade the programming.

“The original ‘Kaleidoscope’ had more companies in it than we do now because each company had only one performance and only one half-hour tech rehearsal,” he says. “They desperately needed a showplace at that time, but we couldn’t get people to review it, because it was so uneven. The quality is much different than before because we give them two evenings and two tech rehearsals each now.”

Still, “Kaleidoscope’s” uphill road to its current success has not been bump-free. Three years ago, for instance, there was a disagreement between Hewitt and Cultural Affairs.

Department officials wanted to revise the audition process--holding tryouts around the city rather than at one central location. They also wanted to have performances at multiple sites.

Hewitt, however, fought to keep auditions and the shows in one place. “I was opposed to it because I didn’t think it was fair to the artists to audition them in different venues,” he says.

He also worried that his pet project was about to be co-opted into something less professional.

“We wanted to unify the community, not tear it apart,” he says. “But it was even suggested to me that we might have the audience choose (who would be on the bill). I was afraid that would turn it into ‘The Gong Show.’ ”

Ultimately, Cultural Affairs and Hewitt may have been reaching for similar goals.

“They felt that everyone wasn’t having an equal opportunity,” he says. “But when we presented evidence, they got off our backs. Now it’s fine. I haven’t had a problem with Cultural Affairs (since). I just don’t think (“Kaleidoscope”) should be a political football.”

Even though this clash was resolved, the selection process remains “Kaleidoscope’s” most controversial aspect. A 10-member selection panel of L.A. dance and performing arts professionals holds the auditions. The group’s roster differs from year to year, although each of the panelists serves for a minimum of two years.

It is a process that many praise. “They have a good selection process,” says producer Tripi, who has been a panelist in years past. “We see a good sampling.”

But even supporters have complaints.

“There have been a few artists, who shall remain nameless, who have been on the program several years in a row,” Tripi says. “I find that bogs the program down. You need to give everybody a chance.”

One artist who says that he hasn’t had that chance is choreographer and Cal State L.A. alumnus Frank Guevara. He is working on a new piece these days. It’s called “My Mexican Hat Dance,” but you won’t see this work at “Dance Kaleidoscope” (he intends to premiere it in Cal State L.A.’s State Playhouse in October).

The scenario--in which Guevara adopts a fictional persona who is also a dancer--is bound to be controversial. It was inspired in part by his having auditioned for “Kaleidoscope” four years ago and again this year but being rejected both times by a process he found “insulting.”

“It’s about a Latino man auditioning in the Southland and how he needs to put a mask on his movement in order to be accepted,” says the East L.A.-raised Guevara.

Guevara says he has been-there done-that himself.

“ ‘My Mexican Hat Dance’ is a protest piece,” says the dancer, who’s known for his rigorous “hyperdance”-style work. “This character just wants to dance --to move from emotion. However, he has to do these traditional things for these people because that’s what they want to see.”

During “Kaleidoscope’s” initial incarnation, from 1985 to 1989, the programs were heavily weighted toward modern dance, leading some critics to charge the festival with lack of interest in so-called ethnic dance (but not Hewitt, who didn’t take over until ‘89). Yet Guevara’s complaint is not that choreographers of color aren’t included in “Kaleidoscope” now--they have contributed a major portion of the programming since 1991--but that non-white artists don’t enjoy the creative freedom of their Anglo colleagues.

Guevara says the problem begins with the selection process: “The feedback wasn’t good. And there was no Latino representation on the panel. Francisco Martinez was supposed to be there, but he wasn’t when I auditioned.”

Guevara believes that even if all of the appointed panelists had been present for his most recent audition, a bias against non-white artists who don’t do culturally specific dance would have prevented him from being selected.

“There is this rule somewhere that I need to be represented by folklorico groups,” he says. “I’m not ashamed of folkloric groups, but it’s a problem for me that that’s what we’re expected to see.”

“There’s a need for Latino modern dance, but there’s no modern Latino representation on the bill,” Guevara says. Partly in response to this situation, he founded the East L.A. Choreographers’ showcase in 1989 and launched his own company, Dance Theatre of East L.A., in 1992.

There are a number of African American modern companies and choreographers on the “Kaleidoscope” bills--including Bridge Dance Theatre, the Lehman Dance Company, Bre Dance Theatre and Bambi Anderson--but the sole Latino modern choreographer-soloist is Roger Garcia.

Unlike Guevara, Garcia believes that “Kaleidoscope” and the dance community in general are open to Latino modern dance. Yet Garcia’s placement on the children’s program may suggest, at least, that his work is not as controversial as Guevara’s.

“I’m not aware of any resistance myself. I think it’s the opposite,” says Garcia, who had never auditioned for the “Kaleidoscope” festival before this year. “I’ve been well-received.”

Hewitt also denies any prejudice. “There is absolutely no bias against any ethnic group, particularly Latinos, doing contemporary or modern work,” he says. “We judge solely on the quality of a 20-minute audition.”

Aside from the continuing debate over programming, the greatest problem in terms of the advancement of L.A. dance remains that there is no place to go from here.

“We need another step up for established artists--otherwise our companies are not going to grow,” Tripi says. “I want to be able to see more of what I see at ‘Dance Kaleidoscope.’ ”

“I think that once a company gets strong, they don’t participate anymore,” Cohen says.

There is, in particular, a dearth of affordable mid-sized venues at which companies can self-produce --a problem that also plagues L.A. theater.

“Everybody has to hunt all over for a venue. I want a place that would be like DTW West, where the community can go and use the space cheaply,” Tripi says, referring to New York’s Dance Theatre Workshop. “Then we can start to get the general population used to coming to a place other than the Music Center to watch dance. Right now, all we really have is ‘Kaleidoscope.’ ”

Fortunately, “Kaleidoscope” aficionados and others may not need to look further than their own back yard to find a new base. The new Luckman Center for the performing arts is set to open this fall at Cal State L.A. It is expected to feature a number of local dance companies in its premiere season, and, Hewitt says, “Kaleidoscope” may also take up residence there next year.

He likens the Luckman to New York’s Joyce Theatre, a mid-sized venue devoted to the presentation of dance.

“I wish we had a theater like that. Maybe then we could support companies like Lewitzky, Los Angeles Chamber Ballet, Aman and Jazz Tap Ensemble with a home base.”

“Since ‘Kaleidoscope’ has been here at Cal State L.A., it’s opened the door for that to happen,” Hewitt says. “We’ve been waiting for a place for dance to be.”*

* “Dance Kaleidoscope,” Program B, State Playhouse, Cal State L.A., 5151 State University Drive, today , 2:30 p.m., and Friday, 8 p.m.; Program C, Saturday, 8 p.m., and next Sunday, 2:30 p.m.; Program D, John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E., Hollywood, Aug. 6, 10 a.m.; Program E, Aug. 6, 8 p.m. $15, (213) 466-1767.