Lewitzky Plans to Dismantle Troupe in 1997 : Dance: The modern dance pioneer is expected to continue with new projects, many of them educational.

In an announcement marking another turning point in her eventful career, Southland modern dance pioneer Bella Lewitzky has revealed plans to dismantle her company at the end of the 1996-97 season--the period in which she will celebrate her 80th birthday (though most sources list 1915 for her birth) and in which her company will reach its 30th anniversary.

The news won’t be official until an April 17 reception at the Samuel and Harriet Freeman House in Hollywood, but company sources confirm that the Lewitzky Dance Company will not exist after June, 1997.

Lewitzky company managing director Ruth L. Eliel explained Saturday that Lewitzky’s decision “had nothing to do” with the current national crisis in arts funding. “Nobody would deny that all arts organizations are struggling all of the time,” Eliel said, “but the company is operating in the black for our third consecutive year.”

Instead, Eliel and Douglas Dodds, chair of the Lewitzky board, emphasized Lewitzky’s commitment to new projects, many of them educational. (Lewitzky herself was in Iowa and unavailable for comment.)

“Many of the things she wants to do are best accomplished without the formal organization of a company,” Dodds said, citing the White Oak Dance Project and the recent short-term performing groups assembled by Twyla Tharp as evidence of artists maintaining a commitment to concert dance “outside the traditional nonprofit corporate structure.”

“I’m sure we’re going to see dancers under Bella’s direction again,” he said. “But these same dancers? Probably not.”

The announcement of Lewitzky’s plans focused on her interest in training others in her “curriculum-based movement” system for elementary schools. “She feels she has something unique to offer (in dance education),” Eliel explained. “There aren’t a lot of dancers and choreographers of her caliber who are also educators of her caliber.”

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Lewitzky has certainly become a legendary teacher, being centered at USC for a number of years and later CalArts, where she served as the first dean of dance. She also produced the dance component of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival and was integral to the initial plans for a Dance Gallery facility on Bunker Hill Downtown--plans abandoned soon after she left the project.

She may be best known, however, for being the first choreographer and company director to sustain a major international career without reference to New York City. Indeed, beyond its other Lewitzky milestones, the 1996 season will also represent the 60th anniversary of her becoming a leading dancer for Lester Horton, the Los Angeles-based choreographer with whom she later founded Dance Theatre, the first facility in America devoted exclusively to dance.