Cash-Flow Woes Threaten L.A. Ballet’s Ambitious Plans : Dance: Salary suspensions at John Clifford’s newly formed company have raised concerns that ‘Nutcracker’ may be delayed a year.

Four months after announcing an ambitious series of productions and tours, John Clifford’s Los Angeles Ballet is experiencing cash-flow problems severe enough that dancer salaries have been suspended--possibly until October.

“Nobody is getting paid right now,” including the administrative staff, said Mindy M. Schwartz, the company’s managing director, in an interview Wednesday. In addition, all construction and remodeling work at the company’s recently acquired Santa Monica studios has been halted.

Confirming dance community reports about the newly formed company (Clifford’s third with Los Angeles in its title), Schwartz said that Clifford had met with the dancers earlier this week and explained to them, in her words, “that we have a cash-flow problem in terms of producing ‘Nutcracker.’ ” Clifford reportedly told them that enough money would be available in October to pay everything due from the July 31 date of their contracts.

Schwartz declined to say where the October money would be coming from, but she said that “the dancers have been paid some money up to now” and that the company hoped to pay them in full sooner than October. In the meantime, they are being encouraged to work elsewhere. None has quit Los Angeles Ballet, Schwartz said.

One option the company is considering: “There is a possibility that we will postpone ‘The Nutcracker’ [until next year],” Schwartz said, “but right now we don’t intend to postpone it.”

Following an engagement in Denver, the $2-million production of the George Balanchine “Nutcracker” is scheduled to be seen in the Southland Dec. 6-10 at the Anaheim Convention Center and (after performances in Las Vegas) Dec. 20-30 at the Universal Amphitheatre.

Schwartz explained that the company’s cash-flow problems largely resulted from “financing that a bank agreed to do and then backed out on.” An arrangement with a second bank also fell through, she said. (She declined to name the banks.) “We are now working with a variety of sources, but this [process] took a great deal of time.”

The Mervyn’s and Target retail stores have been the company’s sole announced major funding source to date. According to Sandy Salyer, vice president of Mervyn’s/Target Public Affairs, her company is “aware” that Los Angeles Ballet “is experiencing some immediate cash-flow issues, but we believe they can work their way through them.”