ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

DANCE

Disappearing Act: Seventeen members of the Senegalese dance troupe Ballet d’Afrique Noire have disappeared in the San Francisco Bay area following a performance at Berkeley Sunday, forcing organizers to cancel the rest of the company’s U.S. tour. By Wednesday, none had filed for political asylum from Senegal--which just ended 40 years of socialist rule. They likely will be treated as illegal aliens when their temporary work permit expires. “They’ve disappeared,” said Jane Hermann of tour arranger ICM Artists Ltd., adding: “I think they’ve been misguided by friends who live here. . . . Nobody can just disappear in the United States unless they have friends who can help them.” The dancers weren’t missed until Monday, when they were to board a bus for a performance that had been scheduled for Wednesday at Palm Desert’s Bob Hope Cultural Center. No L.A. shows were scheduled.

ENTERTAINMENT

Pledging Allegiance: Sir Anthony Hopkins--who received British knighthood in 1992--has become a Yank. The Welshman was to have been sworn in as a U.S. citizen late Wednesday afternoon during a private ceremony at the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles. The Oscar-winning actor was making no public statements about his new national allegiance Wednesday, but his spokeswoman said: “This is something that means a great deal to him and he is very excited about it.”

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Did Cancer Lead to Cancellation?: Actor Robert Urich filed suit this week charging that Castle Rock Television terminated his TNT series “Lazarus Man” in 1996 because he had cancer. In a breach of contract lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Urich said Castle Rock reneged on a commitment to shoot the show’s second season despite the fact that Urich was able to continue working. Urich seeks $1.4 million, the amount he would have received for the second season. A Castle Rock spokesman said Wednesday that the company is “dismayed” by the suit because Urich himself had told Castle Rock he was unable to perform “due to the physical toll of his therapy. . . . We simply do not understand the basis or the timing of this lawsuit.”

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givemebackmyname.now: Jane Seymour is the latest celebrity to file suit against alleged “cyber-squatters” for registering her name on the Internet. The actress filed suit under a law barring companies from registering another person’s name and then trying to sell it back to them. Seymour’s suit, against the Internet company Dreamhost, which had registered the domain name janeseymour.com, follows a similar suit filed by musician John Tesh against the company Celesites.com for registering the domain name JohnTesh.com. That suit was quickly settled in February and resulted in the musician being given rights to the name.

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Quick Takes: Former “Home Improvement” kid Jonathan Taylor Thomas has apparently grown up. He guest stars on Fox’s “Ally McBeal” May 8, with Fox promoting his character as “a potential love interest for Ally (Calista Flockhart).” . . . An actor who had a nonspeaking walk-on role on HBO’s “The Sopranos” was sentenced in New York Wednesday to two to six years in prison for selling worthless stock to senior citizens. Thomas Bifalco, 26, had pleaded guilty to bilking 30 victims out of about $300,000.