L.A. Dance Team Ends Alliance

The Music Center Operating Co. and the Southern California Theatre Assn. have announced the dissolution of their partnership to present dance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles.

After what SCTA board President Rosalind Wyman called “a staggeringly disastrous season,” the group, founded by local performing arts producer James A. Doolittle, will no longer present dance in Southern California.

Running in five installments from late June to early September, the 1997 SCTA/Music Center dance season may have lost more than half a million dollars, according to several sources at SCTA and the Music Center Operating Co.

Longtime L.A.-based impresario Doolittle chose the companies to be presented but died of a heart attack on Feb. 1 at age 83, before all but one contract had been signed for the season, the first in his organization’s formal three-year partnership with the Music Center Operating Co. Afterward, the SCTA board headed by Wyman pledged to honor his plans.

“We agreed to get through this one season for Jimmy’s sake,” Wyman said. “We tried to do the best we could [but] the loss of Jimmy’s leadership was insurmountable.”

Music Center Operating Co. President Sandra Kimberling explained that Doolittle ran essentially a one-man operation. The board “meant well,” she said, “but they’re not in the arts world and don’t have the personal dedication to dance or the arts to put in the work to go on. I’m not surprised that it ended this way.”

Doolittle had sporadically presented dance at the Music Center throughout the ‘90s. In the usual pattern of dance presentation, he guaranteed each company its fee and covered all technical and production expenses. The companies thus took no financial risk, and neither did the Music Center Operating Co. The SCTA/Music Center partnership continued the arrangement.

The 1997 season included engagements by the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago in two programs of mixed repertory, the Cleveland San Jose Ballet in “Blue Suede Shoes” (a ballet to Elvis Presley records), the Houston Ballet in the full-evening “Dracula,” American Ballet Theatre in two performances of repertory and a weekend of “Cinderella” and Ballet Folklorico de Mexico in a cavalcade of regional suites.

“We lost money on everything but Folklorico,” said Serena Tripi, a veteran local dance producer hired by SCTA to implement Doolittle’s season. ABT, she continued, probably incurred the largest deficits.

“ABT did well [at the box office] but was very expensive,” she explained. “It’s very difficult to bring in a company for just six or seven performances and expect to make money.”

Al Finci, a SCTA director and former Doolittle financial advisor, said that as of Sept. 30, 1996, the beginning of that fiscal year, SCTA had a net worth of nearly $900,000, the sum available for presenting the Music Center season.

“It will be a few months before we can be exact about the amount [we have left],” he said, “but I expect there’s going to be something for the future.” The SCTA, he said, might continue to support local dance on a limited basis through lump-sum grants to specific projects. He cited as a precedent Doolittle’s limited contribution to the Matthew Bourne “Swan Lake” that ran at the Ahmanson last spring.

With regard to the 1997 season, Tripi says some missteps may have been made. “Maybe we erred in trying to cross over into the mainstream with works such as ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Dracula,’ ” Tripi said, indicating programming that might have alienated the traditional ballet audience.

The loss of SCTA as a presenting organization will have repercussions beyond the Los Angeles area because the major national and international companies cannot afford to tour without a network of engagements to amortize their expenses. Before Doolittle’s death, Judy Morr, vice president of programming at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, had been talking with him about collaborative projects in the future.

“From Orange County’s point of view,” she said, “it’s beneficial to have a [presenting] organization in L.A. because it makes things possible that we couldn’t do by ourselves.”

According to Kimberling, the Music Center remains “very committed to continuing Mr. Doolittle’s legacy.”

Just weeks before his death, she explained, the impresario had established an endowment of $425,000, separate from the SCTA/Music Center agreement, to be used for future dance performances in his name.

To fill the gap the SCTA has left, she announced that the Music Center will host performances by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in March, during the company’s 40th anniversary season.

“There’s no contract as yet,” she said, “but we’ve made a verbal commitment.” Negotiations are taking place with what she called “possible presenting entities” for dance at the Music Center. Preliminary discussions about the return of the Joffrey in June and Ballet Theatre in July have also taken place, she said.

Tripi expressed sadness at the demise of the SCTA/Music Center agreement, especially because there has been no formal dance presence at the Music Center since the Joffrey Ballet ended its resident company status there in 1991.

“I think Jimmy would have had a heart attack twice over to see it end like this. I think he’d have spent every last cent he had on dance production.”