Many Steps to This Dance Project

The Pina Bausch project is the result of an unprecedented commissioning alliance between six Western cultural organizations that the participants say could well provide a new model for presenting arts in this age of increasingly tight funds.

The entities that have joined forces to finance the $1.2-million project are the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts, James A. Doolittle’s Southern California Theatre Assn., the Los Angeles County Music Center, Cal Performances of UC Berkeley, the University of Texas Performing Arts Center and Arizona State University Public Events.

The joint venture was first conceived about five years ago, when leaders from the commissioning organizations met at the annual Assn. of Performing Arts Presenters conference in New York.

“The idea was to try and create a special offer that would allow Pina some focus on the West Coast,” says Michael Blachly, director of the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts. “We thought it would be timely to try and bring her back.”

But it is not a partnership of equals: The L.A. contingent ponied up more money than the others, and during the planned October tour of the finished piece, L.A. will host three performances, as opposed to one performance each in the other presenters’ cities.

“UCLA and the Music Center put in a little more,” Blachly says, “because it is here [longer].”

For their money, UCLA and the other institutions also bought into Bausch’s creative process. During the Bausch residency at UCLA from Jan. 30 to Feb. 19, for example, students from a range of academic departments interacted in various ways with Bausch. The choreographer also made forays to the other presenting institutions.

With so many masters, the complex undertaking was bound to have some glitches. A group of students who had come to L.A. from Texas to observe Bausch found themselves marooned in the hallway outside a UCLA Dance Building studio one evening.

Blachly says it was a matter of crossed signals and, perhaps, purposes: “That’s one of the areas where there was still some misconception. . . . I understand Pina’s desire to keep her rehearsals closed, and I respect that. But we would have liked to have had students more involved.”