Oakland Ballet has canceled its 2004-05 season

Oakland Ballet, which has built a reputation for quality dancing as well as the ethnic diversity of its members, has canceled its 2004-05 season in an effort to pay off a $250,000 debt.

The troupe, whose latest operating budget was $1.65 million, announced this week that it won’t renew contracts with its 22 dancers and is launching a campaign to raise $500,000 in order to pay down the debt and produce a 40th-anniversary season beginning in fall 2005. It had already trimmed operations by canceling performances in October and cutting the December run of “Nutcracker,” its usual money-maker, from 13 performances to seven.

Meanwhile, Beth Burns, founder of the 21-year-old Santa Ana-based St. Joseph Ballet, is stepping down as artistic director. Melanie Rios Glaser, a former Kennedy Center Latin American fellow who began working with the inner-city youth troupe in 1998, will take over as artistic director in June 2005. Burns, who started the company as an arts intervention program for at-risk youth, will become volunteer artistic advisor.