Success won’t pay the bills

Diavolo Dance Theater is all about risk. Its director, Jacques Heim, sends his dancers plunging off 7-foot-tall jungle gyms, cavorting down a giant wooden staircase on skis, bicycles and boogie boards, or ricocheting across a vertical pegboard like human pinballs.

And then there’s the biggest risk of all: keeping afloat a full-time dance company -- one that regularly tours, unveils new work, pays its dancers a salary and does it all based in dance-poor L.A.

As the company approaches its 10-year anniversary, its risk-taking has largely paid off. Since 1999, it has mounted annual national tours (this season, 30 cities are on the schedule); kept its dancers in paychecks for 30 weeks of the year and, as of August, set itself up in its own rehearsal/performing space, 6,000 square feet of wide-open loft, with lockers, and a new dancer-friendly floor at the Brewery Complex in downtown Los Angeles.

On top of all that, Heim has been tapped to choreograph Cirque du Soleil’s next permanent show in Las Vegas (scheduled to open in 2004). But none of that has tamed the risk.

“Even though we look like a million-dollar company,” explained Parisian-born Heim in his heavily accented English in mid-December, “yesterday I realized I couldn’t pay my dancers, because our operating cost is so high. It’s a tough time.”

The paycheck situation, according to Heim, is mostly a temporary cash-flow problem. The troupe’s new digs, which Heim says are necessary because of the scale of a work-in-progress, “DreamCatcher,” almost tripled the company’s rent and cost it $20,000 in renovation fees.

In January, Diavolo picks up its performing and touring schedule (first gig: Pepperdine University, Jan. 16, then on the road, and then back in L.A. in May), which will help cover bills. The new space will also be put to use for paid workshops and some performances.

In the meantime, fundraising is proceeding at a furious pace; if necessary, Heim says, the company will take out a loan. The dancers have forgone one check before going on a planned four-week hiatus.

“Not getting a paycheck put a slight damper on Christmas,” said four-year Diavolo dancer Monica Campbell, “but Diavolo attracts the kind of people who are willing to work for nothing. That’s why we all stick around. ‘DreamCatcher’ is built, and I know we already have bookings for next year. There is light on the horizon.”

The problem, says Heim, is keeping the momentum going.

“The first five years were difficult, but the next five are the real challenge,” he said, shaking his head and his long gray ponytail.

“ ‘Are you going to continue or are you going to fold?’ We’ve come to a big hump and we need to create a bridge to go over the bad water.”

Heim founded Diavolo in 1992, a year after earning a master’s in choreography from CalArts. He was 27, a graduate of street performing in France, and had already established his signature style: one part modern movement and one part acrobatics. Another trademark: the use of a structural prop, a set piece off which the dancers literally bounce.

In 1995, the company’s eight dancers, actors and acrobats proved a critical hit at Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival. The same year Diavolo received three Lester Horton awards, the Los Angeles dance community’s annual awards, for its Magritte-influenced farce “Tete en L’Air.”

The company continued to play a variety of Los Angeles venues, including UCLA’s Schoenberg and Royce halls, and rack up Hortons (the company has nine; Heim has three for choreography). It was producing a new work about every two years (the pieces are labor intensive to create and mount) but it was still operating at the stripped-down level common to most L.A. dance companies: minimal overhead, no salaries. Everything was paid for on a per performance or per project basis.

Budget grows twentyfold

The first turning point came in 1999, says Heim, when he hooked up with manager David Lieberman, who also represents Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Lieberman began getting the troupe national bookings, and despite the costs of touring, more performances -- the creation of a market that is larger than just Los Angeles -- meant the earned-income coffers grew.

Exposure paid off with donors and grant makers, among them the California-based James Irvine Foundation and Brody Foundation Fellowships. Diavolo even established a fan base in Japan, and recruited a “road company” for a two-month run in that country, adding to the company’s income.

Heim says that Diavolo’s budget before 1999 was $30,000; in ’99 it grew to $100,000. This fiscal year the budget is $700,000.

A chunk of the budget increase comes from a commission for the new work, which is itself a result of the upward trajectory of the company. “DreamCatcher,” which will premiere at the Carpenter Center in Long Beach in October, is a commission from eight presenters across the country that have liked Diavolo’s work on tour. They put up enough money to cover the considerable cost of the work’s new set piece -- an $80,000, 16-foot-tall tubular aluminum wheel with webbing, a giant modernist version of a Native American dreamcatcher, the circular feather-and-string object meant to separate bad dreams from good ones.

Those commissioners will each present the piece during its “premiere” tour starting next fall and, after that, Heim hopes that it will go on to be booked to a wider touring audience.

That’s a model that Heim would like to see repeated -- commissions that help defray expensive start-up costs with a built-in tour as well -- but only as long as he can balance the rest of the overhead to make it work.

L.A. County Arts Commission Executive Director Laura Zucker presents, among other things, dance at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre. Numerous arts organizations have cash-flow problems, she says. “It’s hard to establish a cash reserve, an endowment. Companies have to find different strategies to survive successfully.”

“ ‘DreamCatcher’ is an apt title,” says Jordan Peimer, program director at the Skirball Cultural Center and a former Diavolo board member. “It’s about the ability to keep the dream up in the air.”

No town for football or dance

Heim faults himself for the fact that this month too many bills came all at once, as he puts it. But he also points out that the safety net for dance in L.A. is virtually nonexistent.

“For me, what’s missing is a support system,” he said, lamenting L.A.’s attitude toward dance. “It’s a bit like saying there’s not a football team here. It’s a scandal. L.A. should have a major dance company, whether it’s a major modern company or a major ballet company.”

New York City, the capital of U.S. dance, is a place where companies also struggle to survive financially -- even powerhouse American Ballet Theatre has had to trim its season back in the face of falling donations post-Sept. 11 and in the wake of a bad economy. But it has the sort of infrastructure that Heim says doesn’t exist in L.A.

Consider New York’s Dance Theater Workshop, which recently built a new, $9-million facility. The workshop presents 50 artists a year and also serves another 900 artists with studios and media labs, with an emphasis on emerging and mid-career artists.

David White, executive director and producer of DTW, notes that “everybody has financial Sturm und Drang now.”

Like Heim, he sees L.A.’s problem as deeper than money. “Dance as an art form requires a friction of community -- people sharing studios, dressing rooms, backbiting, kibitzing and all that stuff. L.A. has a dance community, but it doesn’t act like a dance community. L.A. is the sum total of a lot of smaller communities.”

Heim has hopes that the Music Center’s renewed interest in dance might create more of a local focus for the art form. When the Philharmonic moves to Walt Disney Concert Hall in the fall, it will open stage space for other kinds of programming. Heim is already booked to dance at the Ahmanson Theatre in May as part of the center’s efforts to add more dance to the mix at Grand Avenue.

“If we had a home at the Ahmanson,” says Heim, fantasizing, “and were performing there every two years, there would be an awareness among L.A. audiences. We could build a bigger mailing list and create bigger fundraising.”

In the meantime, Heim likens his dancers to warriors, and not just because of the moves they are required to do. They have to be, as he says, “in top shape and not be afraid of heights and blood.”

The whole company has to apply the same fearlessness to keeping Diavolo on its feet in hard times, he says.

“It’s like going into war -- put on a warm coat, get food and a backpack, put your goggles on and good luck.”

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Diavolo Dance Theater

Where: Smothers Theatre, Pepperdine University, 24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu

When: 8 p.m., Jan. 16

Price: $35

Contact: (310) 506-4522