Some intriguing baby steps

In the feature film “Center Stage” five years ago, an oversexed motorcycle-riding ballet superstar played by Ethan Stiefel quit a company clearly modeled on American Ballet Theatre to start his own leaner, meaner dance ensemble.

These days, Stiefel continues to insist that the “Center Stage” character “is not who I am” (just like Mikhail Baryshnikov a generation ago after “The Turning Point”). But Stiefel acknowledges that, in other ways, his life is “imitating art more and more.”

At age 32, in fact, Stiefel is about to assume the reins of Orange County’s Ballet Pacifica, with a view to building it into a major classical institution. Envisioning what he calls “a company for the whole Southern California region,” he plans to launch touring repertory performances in September 2006, followed by a “Nutcracker” in Orange County.

Moreover, Stiefel isn’t the only ballet carpetbagger aiming for a future in the Southland. In Santa Monica, former Royal Danish Ballet artistic director Thordal Christensen and his wife, New York City Ballet alumna Colleen Neary, are forming a company under the aegis of the Westside Ballet, a school with a junior company that has sent many of its finest students to major troupes.

Meanwhile, former Kirov Ballet principal Eldar Aliev has proposed moving his Russian-style Ballet Internationale lock, stock and barrel-turns from Indianapolis to L.A. to become the resident company at the Music Center.

All of these new players on the local ballet scene exude noble intentions. But they don’t know the territory: the specific, daunting problems that defeated many equally well-meaning predecessors. For starters, all of them come from environments where ballet is at the top of the dance food chain, and a whole other set of realities awaits them.

Looking to build

Amid this newest pack of hopefuls, Stiefel’s status as a reigning international star, and the $6-million-to-$6.5-million budget he is proposing for his first season, give him pride of place.

“The idea of the company, as far as a business plan,” he says, “is essentially the Jet Blue model, where you have very good key people who can do more than one thing and, of course, the standards are maintained.

“We’re looking to build a company of soloists,” he explains, with 20 to 25 permanent members, supplemented by performers from the Ballet Pacifica academy and other local institutions for “The Nutcracker” and similar large-scale projects.

But which “Nutcracker”? “Either a brand-new production made specifically for Ballet Pacifica,” he answers, or the beloved version choreographed by George Balanchine. “I’m in discussions with the Balanchine Trust as far as doing it with them.”

He plans two to three weeks of “Nutcrackers,” plus 25 to 30 of repertory programs in Southern California, with national and international touring on the horizon.

Contracts for 36 to 40 weeks, “at wages comparable to what soloists get in major ballet companies,” would make Ballet Pacifica “competitive,” he says.

“In some of the larger companies, people give it a shot but it doesn’t happen for them, and now they’ll know there’s a place that’s doing great things where they will get the chance to dance a lot and progress.”

Stiefel says he’ll perform “in a limited way” with Ballet Pacifica while continuing his career at Ballet Theatre, “somewhat scaled back.” He has no ambitions to choreograph, and his repertory plans are now only preliminary.

“My artistic vision is following in the spirit of not only American dance and what American dancers have had to offer but certainly what the dancer of the future will be,” he says. “The mantra for Ballet Pacifica is quality and flexibility -- the quality of the productions, dancers and repertory as well as being able to move into many different venues and be versatile.”

At first glance, Stiefel’s identification with American Ballet Theatre and Neary’s with New York City Ballet might suggest that the eternal rivalry between these companies will be replayed by surrogates separated by a stretch of the 405 Freeway.

But the situation is more complex, for Stiefel danced in City Ballet before joining Ballet Theatre, and Neary has European ballet modernist Maurice Bejart in her background as well as Balanchine.

In addition, Christensen’s experience as a principal dancer in his native Copenhagen and, before that, Seattle (in Pacific Northwest Ballet) gives this husband-and-wife team familiarity with a wide range of dance-makers.

“Obviously Balanchine will play a strong role in our repertory, and we’ll do some [August] Bournonville also,” Christensen says. “Of course, we’ve got to dance ‘Nutcracker’ -- any company in America needs a ‘Nutcracker’ -- and to do that we’d have to hire additional dancers.”

Initially, he intends to focus on what he calls “proven work,” because “before you can invite choreographers in, you have to establish a company style, to find a balance between creativity and trying to build an organization.”

Although Westside Ballet will serve as its school, the company will be called Los Angeles Ballet -- though it has no connection to the troupe of the same name run by John Clifford from the early 1970s to the mid-’80s. Or with Clifford’s abortive attempt to resurrect it a decade later.

Christensen speaks of “a projected budget of about $1 million -- it’s very conservative” and a company of approximately 20 dancers: about 16 regulars on 21- to 26-week contracts plus guests coming in for various programs.

“We’re talking about three seasons a year right now,” he says, “with the idea of trying to perform in as many different venues in L.A. as possible -- to be able to take ballet out to the people. It’s so hard to get around here.”

Early announcements said performances would begin this fall, but Christensen is taking a wait-and-see attitude. “We’re in the forming stages right now, so if we make it in 2005, great. But if not, the important thing is to do it right.

“One of the reasons that I dared accept this challenge is my having the experience of dancing in Seattle and understanding what it is to build a company by watching Kent Stowell and Francia Russell slowly pulling Pacific Northwest Ballet together piece by piece and creating one of the biggest success stories in American dance.

“However great the touring companies might be, there’s always pride in a home-grown team. But it can’t happen overnight. You need to build up a community, a network, a family in support of that home team.”

Has he got a deal for L.A.

While Stiefel, Christensen and Neary dream, plan, fund-raise and hold auditions in pursuit of a future that’s clear to them and their supporters but by no means guaranteed, Eldar Aliev runs a successful 30-dancer company in Indianapolis with 20 productions in its current repertory. This is the company and repertory he wants Los Angeles to buy outright and expand as a symbol of the city’s cultural hegemony.

“Ballet Internationale is the only company in the world that can move to L.A., change its name and give itself over to Los Angeles, and immediately perform at the pinnacle of excellence,” reads a proposal he commissioned to submit to Music Center dance honchos this month.

With a current budget of $3.5 million and several other Kirov luminaries on its staff, the company has visited China, Taiwan, Canada and various U.S. cities over the last three years. Last November, Aliev’s “Nutcracker” introduced local dance-goers to the company at Cal State L.A., and in April the New York Times praised a mixed bill for its “committed, quietly exciting dancing.”

Aliev, “who has directed the Indianapolis company since 1994, has assembled a group of largely Russian-trained principals and soloists,” the reviewer wrote. “But unlike many Russian guest dancers who come here, these are young and vibrant and at the start of their careers.”

The idea sounds very, very L.A.: Instant Russian Ballet (just add money). And, of course, Russian style does indeed reflect centuries of technical development and artistic refinement. But Renae Robinson, manager of dance presentations at the Music Center, maintains that her institution is not shopping for any kind of resident dance company right now, no matter how high the arabesques or cheekbones.

Robinson does reveal that a task force is looking at models for what -- down the line -- a resident company could be: the needs and constituencies it would serve, the costs involved and the dance forms that might be chosen.

And here’s where the problems begin for Ballet Pacifica, Los Angeles Ballet and Ballet Internationale.

It’s no secret that most of the citizens in Greater Los Angeles come from cultures whose dance heritages are different from, and older than, ballet. Developing those citizens into a core ballet audience will require as much time and funding as building any of these companies to the status their leaders hope for.

Meanwhile, the ballet public grows older but not bigger, more conservative in taste and estranged from the major changes taking place in all the performing arts: another problem for company leaders with an eye on tomorrow.

What’s more, the local ballet audience can support the greatest ensembles in the world for only a week at a time. And if that’s the only public that recognized stars such as France’s Sylvie Gullem or Russia’s Diana Vishneva can attract here, how exactly will new professional companies ever sustain themselves as year-round institutions with their rosters headed by the likes of Anne Nonymous or Yuri Obscuri?

Perhaps the directors of the struggling ballet companies in such communities as San Diego, Santa Barbara, Claremont, San Pedro, Anaheim and the L.A. metropolitan area ought to invite the classical newcomers for a facts-of-life session about survival in our battle-scarred ballet landscape. Even the Pentagon might learn a thing or two about strategies for existing in a constant state of emergency.

Starting in the 1960s, Eugene Loring’s Western Ballet, Clifford’s Los Angeles Ballet, David Wilcox’s Long Beach Ballet and the bicoastal experiment by the Joffrey Ballet have all, decade by decade, swan-dived into extinction, leaving nothing behind except lessons about what they lacked.

A board with wide resources and deep pockets; a permanent home; an exciting, original repertory; a young audience that can afford tickets throughout a season -- with so much else on a company’s wish list, dancing splendidly (or getting others to do so) can seem the easiest goal to achieve, indeed almost an afterthought. But that’s arguably the strongest entry on the Stiefel, Christensen, Neary and Aliev resumes.

Clearly they have their work cut out for them -- and it will involve far more than world-class tendus at the barre.

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Segal is The Times’ dance critic. Contact him at C[email protected].