MUSIC & DANCE NEWS : From Barre to Baud for Dance

D ance photos are now in cy berspace. To see them, sign on to the Photo Perspectives Museum on the World Wide Web. The address is: https://www.i3tele.com/photo --perspectives--museum/faces/perspectives.home.html.

Once you connect, click on “Body and Grace: American Ballet Theatre,” and start browsing through a pictorial history of the celebrated New York company (through Sept. 15). The show consists of 30 black-and-white portraits of principal dancers and soloists, commissioned by the company for its 55th anniversary, plus 12 historical photos drawn from ABT’s archives.

The portraits, by Nancy Ellison, include Susan Jaffe as Nikiya in “La Bayadere,” Julie Kent as Odette in “Swan Lake” and Johan Renvall as the Bronze Idol in “La Bayadere.” (In all, Ellison made more than 100 photographs as part of the anniversary project. The complete set will be included in the 1995-96 souvenir program, which will be available in Southern California when ABT dances “Romeo and Juliet” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center Feb. 22-25.)

The on-line archival material ranges from shots of the company’s 1940 opening-night performance of Eugene Loring’s “The Great American Goof” to Mikhail Baryshnikov in Twyla Tharp’s 1976 “Push Comes to Shove.”

As you move from photo to photo at the Photo Perspectives Museum, you can click on prompts that give you biographies of the dancers and histories and plot summaries of the ballets in which they are portrayed. At the end of the exhibition, you can leave e-mail messages for ABT, Ellison or the museum’s curators.

Aaron D. Schindler, director of the 10-week-old New York City-based Internet site, says that his on-line museum will emphasize photographs with social and political as well as artistic messages. When you connect with the museum now, for instance, you can also choose to view a show called “Faces of Sorrow: Agony in the Former Yugoslavia” by three dozen photographers from 14 countries (through Aug. 5).

“My idea is to present a message to as wide a public as possible,” he says. “While it is very prestigious to be in a museum, I have looked at alternative types of venues to get more public exposure. The Internet seemed to be a perfect venue for people all over the world to view the exhibits.”

Schindler may be right about his audience. “We’re up to about 425 [viewers] a day, averaging 11 clicks, or ‘hits’ a person,” he says. “It’s pretty even between the two exhibits. There is such a strong dance community and so many dance fans out there.”

Comments have been recorded from Hanford, Calif., to Lyon, France, he says. And interactivity has set in. “I have myself some dance pages, and have added a link to yours on it,” writes Estelle Souche from Lyon, France. She continues: “(The URL is: https://www.ens-lyon.fr/ ~ esouche/danse/dance.html ) . If you want you can do some links to my pages (for example I have a page about Antony Tudor).”

Says Amy Reusch Chibeau( chibeau@casbah.acns.nwu.edu ): “I am delighted to include your exhibit in the collection of WWW Dance Sites we’re collecting for alt.arts.ballet. “

To get the pictures, you need a computer with graphic capabilities and Internet access, a Web browser program and a modem of at least 14,400 baud. The faster the modem, the faster the photos will transmit onto your screen.

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DOWN STAGE: The Los Angeles Philharmonic will not extend the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage into the hall as it had announced for the 1995-96 season. The idea first occurred to Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen when he conducted in the pit for the Music Center Opera’s presentation of Debussy’s “Pelleas et Melisande” in February. The sound, Salonen said, seemed to be “warmer and more spacious, more intense.”

And so it seemed to just about everyone who heard the orchestra during experiments with the thrust stage in March and April. But there was one glitch. People sitting in the loge and balcony could no longer see the conductor. They complained by letter and phone.

“We dropped the ticket prices; we gave out cushions,” Philharmonic spokeswoman Norma Flynn says. “We brought in architects. But they have not been able to solve the sight-line problems. Because of fire regulations, the entire orchestra had to be put on the apron in front of the fire curtain,” a situation that created the sight-line problems.

“But it is not a dead issue,” Flynn adds. “Architects from Frank Gehry’s office came down and told us it is possible to do but not in the amount of time available before the start of the season. . . . We want to do it right, but it will take a little time.”

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SEASONING: And while we have Norma Flynn on the line. . . .

Last Sunday’s Calendar (“Building a Better Bowl,” by Diane Haithman) brought up a nagging summer issue: What exactly constitutes the Hollywood Bowl season?

This year, concerts began there June 3, with R&B; singer Luther Vandross, and have included a Tom Petty event, the Playboy Jazz Festival and most recently Mariachi USA.

“Those were leased events,” explains Flynn, hence not official Bowl presentations.

Well, what about Engelbert Humperdinck and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra on June 21, the Los Angeles Philharmonic benefit concert on June 27, the L.A. Chamber Orchestra concerts on June 28 and 29, the opera night on June 30. . . ?

“Those are all non-subscription concerts,” Flynn says. She acknowledges that the first Bowl-sponsored concert was Humperdinck but says that the term opening will be reserved for the first night of the subscription series, which this year is July 11.

“In the past we have had the so-called gala opening on the July 4th preceding the subscription series opening. Now we’ve gone into a preseason in June. It’s a little crazy.”

All clear now?