PERFORMING ARTS : COMMENTARY : Balletic Blight Still Plagues L.A. : Major-league opera has at last taken root on the West Coast, so why can’t major-league ballet get a toehold here?

San Francisco has one. Houston has one. Boston has one. Toronto has one. Even Miami has one. New York has at least four.

And Los Angeles has none. Lofty and loud, proud and pretentious Los Angeles has no major-league ballet company. We never did.

The situation is embarrassing. It’s sad and painful. Also, it’s pathetic.

In the bad old days--roughly a decade beginning in the mid-’70s--we harbored a minor-league ballet company. John Clifford and his bright little band tried stubbornly, and, in their way, valiantly, to give the land of the plastic lotus an ensemble to call its own. The inherent aesthetic and ethic were predicated partly on hand-me-down Balanchine, partly on second-hand show-biz pizazz. It was an odd combination and, unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough.

In those bad old days, we also enjoyed the consolation of major-league imports. That was when grand-scale touring was a relatively easy fact of artistic life, and our economy supported such endeavors. That was when an egocentric visionary named Sol Hurok, who died in 1974, redefined the meaning of the word impresario on a national basis.

In those days, we hosted regular, reasonably lengthy seasons by an imposing variety of prestigious visitors. Los Angeles was on everyone’s itinerary. We saw the mighty Bolshoi and the delicate Kirov (everything is relative). We saw eminently royal ensembles from London and Copenhagen, smart upstarts from Stuttgart, polished stylists from New York, Havana and Paris, glamorous traditionalists from Australia and Canada.

In those days, American Ballet Theatre spent a lot of time here, for better or worse. So did the jaunty Joffrey, which actually enjoyed an official residency of sorts from 1983 to 1991. In those days, the Music Center regarded balanced bookings as part of its cultural raison d’etre . In those days, large audiences could be attracted to dance presentations at the Greek Theatre, not to mention Shrine Auditorium--an ugly but useful old cavern that accommodates over 6,000. Awful though it seemed, we even had ballet in the wide open spaces of Hollywood Bowl.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not glorifying a problematic past. Everything wasn’t wonderful. Still, there was a lot to see.

It isn’t much like that any more. A few veteran dancers and ambitious teachers have formed organizations in Southern California that they call companies. Their sporadic performances can hardly be called seasons, however. The modest products tend to suggest workshop efforts. There is no professionalism in depth. No one, apparently, has the means, and/or the gumption, to think big.

The most dependable importer of major-league dance in the area is now the Orange County Performing Arts Center, which has hosted such visitors as the Royal Ballet of London, the Royal Danish Ballet and the Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg as well as the Joffrey and American Ballet Theatre. The Costa Mesa impresarios--past and present--deserve credit for keeping the spark alive. Never mind that in earlier times we had frequent fires, not just occasional sparks. Never mind that the tour stops used to last weeks, not just days.

James Doolittle, a veteran huckster-hypester sponsor, has recently rejoined the fray. The feisty octogenarian has brought some dance, as well as unreasonable facsimiles thereof, to downtown L.A. and environs for the benefit of a needy community as well as for his own, self-advertised greater glory. It may be significant, however, that he sold the Radio City Rockettes this year as half of a vulgar dance package with the Joffrey, and the main Joffrey attraction was a return engagement of that shameless rock-and-schlock extravaganza, “Billboards.”

If the Music Center ever gets around to building Frank Gehry’s almost mythical, vaguely mystical Disney Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is supposed to become a full-time haven for opera and ballet. Opera is doing fairly well there, at last. But what ballet can we expect, and how much? Who will pay for it?

If anyone knows, no one is telling us.

In the meantime, we must be content, for the most part, with dancerly dribs and drabs. San Francisco brings Helgi Tomasson’s “Romeo and Juliet” to the Music Center in November. “Nutcracker” season (yawn) promises the Joffrey’s Currier-and-Ives version at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, plus one scaled-down edition by something called the Grigorovich Moscow Ballet (a Bolshoi rip-off) at Cerritos and another by the L.A. Chamber Ballet at Cal State L.A.

The Joffrey reprises Leonide Massine’s controversial “Les Presages” and (shudder) “Billboards” in Orange County in April. The Royal Danish Ballet may cap the season, literally as well as figuratively, in the same venue when it introduces a mystery piece (it won’t be Ashton’s “Romeo and Juliet,” as previously announced) in tandem with a controversial revision of “La Sylphide.”

Where are the stars of yesteryear? Not here. Where are their successors? Good question.

Modern-dance companies pass through town from time to time in various locales, bearing numerous attractive names. The Alvin Ailey company (hemidemisemiclassical) brings Judith Jamison’s new “Hymn,” based on a text by Anna Deavere Smith, to UCLA in February.

Mini-ballet companies--from Lincoln Center and the Paris Opera--periodically offer stellar dancers in short pieces with canned accompaniment at Cerritos. Julio Bocca--one of the few bravura champions who can withstand even faint comparisons with the likes of Nureyev and Baryshnikov--brings a taste of the Teatro Colon to the same center late this month.

All of these attractions would be terrific supplements to the main course in any city’s dance diet. For us, alas, they are the main course.

We can do better.