Darlene Neel; Key Figure in Southland Dance Community

Darlene Neel, former manager of the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company and an important figure in the Southern California dance community, has died of cancer at the age of 58.

Neel died Dec. 3 in Los Angeles, according to her friend and colleague, Serena Tripi.

A native of Los Angeles who held bachelor’s degrees in both business and theater, Neel helped create and guide several local arts organizations, including the Dance Resource Center of Greater Los Angeles.

She first gained major status with the cultural and business community when she co-produced the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. The experience introduced her to art forms from around the world, including Japan’s butoh. One of the hits of that multicultural festival, which Neel helped to provide, was Sankai Juku, one of the best known butoh ensembles. The group’s members demonstrated the stark and startling dance technique by diving off the top of the Los Angeles County Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

By 1998, as head of her own Darlene Neel Presentations, Neel was the American agent for another butoh act, Buto-Sha Tenkei, which translates as “Heavenly Chickens.”

“You will see larger physical action and more use of sound emanating from the artists,” Neel told newsmen before a performance in Austin, Texas, comparing that group to her Olympic dancers. “You still see the same wonderful ma, the slowed timing you find in Asian culture. Buto-Sha Tenkei is very political and has double- and triple-entendres. There is an enormous awareness of human beings’ relationships to Earth and to one another.”

Neel also worked with such artists as Pina Bausch, Mehmet Sander, DanceMakers, B.J. Crosby, Compagnie Marie Chouinard and Henry Butler.

She was with Lewitzky’s dance company from 1967 until 1993, designing costumes and lighting, raising funds and serving for many years as general manager.

In 1991, when the troupe performed at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium, a local reviewer noted that “Neel’s costumes and lighting design heightened the theatrical impact of Lewitzky’s work.”

Neel was instrumental in securing grants for the Lewitzky company from such organizations as the National Endowment for the Arts.

She also sat on boards that disbursed grants, particularly the California Arts Council, where she openly berated museums for failing to serve minorities. Neel said in 1987 that only 1% of the arts groups funded by the council had minority people on their boards of directors.

“That’s not good enough for a state of this [racial] diversity,” she told The Times.

The same year, she criticized another section of the council which hands out awards to dance groups for cutting the number of grants from 33 to 24.

“I am deeply saddened by this,” she told The Times. “What you want is that list to be big. It should create a kind of wonderful menu.”

Neel is survived by two sisters, Earlene Subias and Cathlene Gould.

A public memorial service is being planned for January, Tripi said.