Students Put the Future of Dance in Perspective

As teenagers arrived in shifts for technical rehearsals on Saturday afternoon, the Ivar Theatre in Hollywood suddenly looked like a high school auditorium or the set of a film that might be titled “Center Stage 90028,” focusing on a brand-new talent show for young dancers from a dozen Southland studios and in-school dance programs.

In a movie, however, there would be competition, awards, conflict and heartbreak. Not at Ivar High: “New Perspectives: High School Dance Invitational” simply offered a showcase of local excellence in a junior version of the “Spectrum: Dance in L.A.” series produced for the last four years by Deborah Brockus, choreographer and director of Brockus Project Dance Company.

Brockus was everywhere Saturday: checking computerized lighting cues, hanging posters on lobby walls, dealing with a CD player that ate the disc intended to accompany students from the Debbie Allen Dance Academy and encouraging performers to stay and watch the other groups for the sake of their artistic growth. When she paused, it was usually to peer at a dangerously cloudy sky and voice the hope that an imminent rainstorm might begin after 11 p.m.

“New Perspectives” was being funded by the night’s ticket sales, she said, “and I’m doing a lot of praying.” In Hollywood, of course, prayers are always answered, so the performance was nearly sold out, the rains never came, the audience screamed approval and Brockus began planning a sequel.

Obviously, any event focused on young artists represents an investment in the future, but this one gained distinction by offering its 12- to 21-year-old participants experience in and exposure to concert dance: choreography by such icons as Marius Petipa and Alvin Ailey as well as local young firebrands such as Robert Gilliam and Stephanie Gilliland.

Commercial dance wasn’t exactly excluded from the 18-part performance, but the best new pieces had a sense of adventure that took the evening way beyond predictable show-bizzy routines.

Gilliland’s triumphant “Oval Loops” enlisted 10 dancers from the Idyllwild Arts Academy in a high-velocity, hyperathletic and often potentially bruising showpiece that tested the women’s balletic balances, the men’s gymnastic prowess and everyone’s ability to body-surf across the floor.

Earlier Saturday, Idyllwild company members told The Times they felt overly sheltered in their Riverside County community and that performing in “New Perspectives” offered them a chance to “get off the mountain,” in the words of dancer Andrew Cowan. And Meagan Pulfer of the Ballet Etudes ensemble at the Huntington Academy of Dance in Orange County spoke of her limited stage opportunities at home and how facing an audience in this kind of event “is totally different than just dancing at your studio.”

Others had different reasons for participating. Choreographer Pat Taylor, for instance, teaches at the Crossroads School in Santa Monica and saw the event as a way of raising the profile of dance on campus at a time when the art is growing from a satellite of the drama department toward academic independence. Crossroads dancer Kauan Gracie added another motive: “We don’t want always to be pushed aside by athletics.”

Gilliam said that “New Perspectives” allowed him to workshop choreographic ideas that he might eventually develop further with professional dancers. However, his brilliantly original “X-Am Stress” turned out to be the only piece on the program that used student dancers to depict everyday student experience. Putting seven female dancers from South Torrance High School at school desks, he used convulsive group motion and rock music to express the frustration and even fury underneath classroom behavior.

It’ll surprise no one in the dance world that excerpts from Ailey’s classic “Revelations” brought the house down--even with “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel” needlessly expanded from a trio to a quintet. However, the urgent, loving performance by the Allen Academy in Culver City would have been impressive even in lesser repertory.

Current Ailey star Matthew Rushing also contributed one of the program’s highlights: the stark, end-of-love duet from his “Mone,” performed by dancers from his former home, the Los Angeles County High School of the Arts. But nobody outdanced L.A.’s irrepressible Lula Washington Youth Dance Ensemble, who are not merely experienced performers but dancing ambassadors as well. “I tell my kids to communicate,” said choreographer Tamica Washington (Lula’s daughter). “Get to know somebody new.”

Washington emphasized how important it can be for young dancers to see lots of different styles, and even though traditional world dance idioms were absent on Saturday, “New Perspectives” delivered. Jazz dance vixens warmed up alongside demure ballerinas.

Companies struggling to establish themselves (City Ballet of Los Angeles) interacted with those looking for wider recognition (the Orange County High School of the Arts). Besides those previously listed, other participating groups included the Malibu Ballet and Performing Arts Society, Retter’s Academy of Dance in Agoura Hills and the Rozann-Zimmermann Ballet Center in Chatsworth.

Through it all, Brockus kept smiling, convinced that the future of dance in Los Angeles is secure--as long as the rain doesn’t fall, the CD player does its job and somebody lines up at the box office besides the dancers’ blood relatives.