Dance as an equal partner

BE they corny or sublime, we’ve got a soft spot for dance stories. “The Red Shoes,” “A Chorus Line,” “Billy Elliot.” Tales of life and love played out by fearsome directors, streetwise gypsies and an assortment of prima donnas, underdogs and ingenues. Even so, in such a crowded field is there room for one more?

South Coast Repertory thinks there is. As part of its ninth Pacific Playwrights Festival, it is presenting the premiere of “The Studio,” written, choreographed and directed by Christopher d’Amboise, the 46-year-old scion of one of American ballet’s famous families.

“This piece is unique in that it attempts to use dance to advance the storytelling and the character development,” says David Emmes, the theater’s producing artistic director. “We’re used to ‘Here’s the play’ and ‘Here’s the dance’ and then going back to ‘Here’s the play.’ In this case, the two are inextricably woven together.”

Embracing what he calls “choreographic storytelling,” D’Amboise tries to express ideas through movement as well as words. Rather than the typical large ensemble whirling through glorious production numbers, he limits the action to three characters -- a choreographer and two dancers -- in a rehearsal room. “It’s very basic,” he says. “What I discovered in my own career is that so much happens in a studio. It’s incredibly theatrical, emotional and passionate, and no one gets to see it except those who are there.”

By bringing us into the hidden chamber, D’Amboise hopes to penetrate the mystique surrounding the making of a ballet. “A pas de deux will be created before your eyes,” he says. “You will learn what each step means in the physical vocabulary -- and in the personal language of the performers who bring it to life. It’s easy to forget that the bodies gliding across a stage belong to people who may have things other than art on their minds.

“Sometimes, it’s big feelings like ambition and lust,” he says. “Or maybe it’s something smaller. The girl sees her partner looking at her and she wonders if he thinks she’s sexy, or she worries that he thinks she smells funny.”

We eavesdrop on the characters’ thoughts and peek into their private moments in the studio or at home. As the plot unfolds, secrets are revealed. Lisa, whose insecurities keep everyone from realizing how good she is, comes to audition for the reclusive genius Emil, unaware that the reason he’s been in hiding is that he’s lost his ability to choreograph. Instead of the solo she thought he was devising, she finds he is pinning his comeback on a two-person ballet. Her partner turns out to be Jackie, whose loyalty to Emil over the years may be costing him his own chance at success.

“All these emotions and relationships will come together,” says D’Amboise, “so you will understand what it’s like to be human in the dance world.”

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Born into ballet

D’AMBOISE’S parents, Jacques and Carolyn, were members of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, and for 11 years he attended its academy, the School of American Ballet. In 1978, when he was 18, Balanchine invited him to join the company. Soon after, he wrote a memoir, “Leap Year: A Year in the Life of a Dancer,” which chronicled his first season, including his struggles to find a place in the corps and to establish an identity separate from that of his father, a model for the modern American male ballet dancer and an acclaimed choreographer and teacher.

Known for his dynamic athleticism, D’Amboise graduated to major roles in productions like Jerome Robbins’ “Fancy Free.” After five years, he left ballet and studied acting, music and psychology and pursued his writing. A year later, he returned to the New York City Ballet and was named a principal dancer. On Broadway he received a 1986 Tony nomination for his featured role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Song & Dance.”

In 1988, D’Amboise resigned from the company and started the New York-based Off-Center Ballet. He went on to run the Pennsylvania Ballet for four years in the early ‘90s. After that, he concentrated on choreography and directing.

At the same time, he kept searching for ways to make “words, movement and image equal partners.” He wanted to expand on what he learned from Robbins, a master of both ballet and musical theater. Another goal was to address a caveat often attributed to Balanchine. “He said that in dance there are no mothers-in-law,” D’Amboise says. “There is no step that says mother-in-law because it’s too abstract a concept. I wanted to find a way to tell an audience what something abstract means.”

In 2002, D’Amboise returned to the New York City Ballet as a choreographer and was given dancers and a room and told to do whatever he wanted. The experience helped him realize how precious and elusive are the moments within the rehearsal process. He began to write “The Studio.” A workshop production attracted the attention of New York producers who called South Coast Repertory officials. Artistic director Martin Benson took a look, and he and Emmes booked it into the coming 2004 season.

The play, however, needed more development and, Emmes says, there wasn’t time to assemble the right creative team and cast. “So we deferred and at that point we went on to a different project.”

The next year he attended another workshop. “Christopher had strengthened the text aspects and clarified the relationships,” Emmes says. “We had the current spot open so we resumed the dialogue.”

This past winter, South Coast invited D’Amboise to Costa Mesa, where he holed up with his laptop to work on rewrites, aided by a group of actors and literary manager Megan Monaghan. “When I first read the play it was a 90-minute one-act, slick as a whistle,” Monaghan says. The characters and the concepts were intriguing, but she and her South Coast colleagues had questions about context, structure and motivation.

“Christopher impressed us,” says Emmes, “with answers like a playwright’s -- and not like a choreographer who was trying to write a play.”

D’Amboise says the theater, mindful of his being a new author who also has to direct and choreograph, was “smart in their support by making sure I took care of the play first. They gave me the time to see that a two-act flowed better than one and that I could enrich the characters and escalate the stakes. There were a lot of discoveries.”

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Intuition plus preparation

ON a drizzly March afternoon at South Coast, the choreographer and his cast are in a rehearsal room working on dance movements for a play about a choreographer and his cast in a rehearsal room working on dance movements. A lot of potential exists for blurring of lines in an art-imitating-life-imitating-art sort of way.

One thing that’s clear is that D’Amboise is nothing like stern Emil. In a loose brown sweater, khakis and stocking feet, he bounds between sideline and center stage as he cajoles and muses and brainstorms with his performers.

“That was great,” he tells Nancy Lemenager, who plays Lisa, after she and John Todd, who plays Jackie, experiment with a spin-and-catch. “Were you timing it? No? That’s OK. You were feeling it.”

He constantly talks about feeling things, which makes him sound like a creature of intuition. That’s half right. His free-flowing style is grounded in hours of preparation and years of experience that allow him to drop in examples from roles he’s danced or tips he’s heard from people like Balanchine, Robbins and “my dad.”

D’Amboise encourages Lemenager and Todd to open up. The result is an increasingly exuberant series of moves leading to a kiss that signals the beginning, rather than the end, of a good story.

After a break, D’Amboise invites Terrence Mann, who plays Emil, to choreograph a sequence. Mann, who received Tony nominations for “Beauty and the Beast” and “Les Miserables,” is a noted actor and director, but he has scant experience as a choreographer. Mann begins tentatively. “Lift weights.” “Telephone wire.” Lemenager and Todd respond to his suggestions for improvisation. Mann warms to the role. “Armadillo,” he declares. “Tucked like two lovers.” As he speaks he bends to mirror his own command. “Heave a breath -- and split!”

“Was that a surprise? Yeah, you bet,” says Mann later. “I had just met everybody three days earlier and I’d never done much choreography. That exercise, of course, was about my being the choreographer in the play and about getting me to establish the rapport I needed with Nancy and John. To jump in and do it.”

Spontaneity is a D’Amboise hallmark, says Mann, who is married to D’Amboise’s sister, Charlotte, who also is a Broadway actress. “He creates an open situation. Where an idea comes from doesn’t matter -- as long as it’s good.”

Too many ideas, even good ones, can be dangerous, D’Amboise has learned. “There are just so many things I’m interested in and I keep trying to morph them together.” He says “The Studio” has taught him the importance of focus and balance. “The key is getting it all out there, then taking words away and telling the idea with the steps, and then melding words back in. Then you have it. An expressiveness you would not have with just the dance or the words alone. “

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‘The Studio’

Where: South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 7:30 p.m. Sundays and Tuesdays, 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Saturdays

and Sundays

Ends: May 7

Price: $28 to $58

Contact: (714) 708-5555 or www.scr.org