Dance

more than any of its sister arts, dance takes root only very slowly in new soil. There are three reasons for this: First, there are very few great choreographers alive at any moment (why this is so is a mystery worthy of speculation); second, all great companies, especially ballet, have schools attached to them that feed students into the corps and develop, then perpetuate, a tradition; and third, to the naked eye dance requires a happier marriage of performer to “text” than any other performing art. As W.B. Yeats asked, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

Ten years ago America experienced a ballet boom that sent vibrations into the provinces. In our area the dust has settled after the explosion, and today, anyone who wants to understand the local dance scene has four vistas to survey: Dallas Ballet, The International Theatrical Arts Society, Fort Worth Ballet and then all the others, small community or regional troupes that give beginners and amateurs a stage for their talents.

The former Dallas Civic Ballet, which had limped along for eight years under the benign neglect of George Skibine, reconstituted itself seven years ago as a fully professional troupe with a varied repertoire. After Skibine’s death in 1981 it attempted a leap into the big leagues by hiring Flemming Flindt, formerly of the Royal Danish Ballet, as artistic director. Since relocating in the Majestic Theatre and developing school and studio space nearby, the ballet became an early anchor in the Arts District. It has served, in other words, an honorable civic function.

Its artistic enterprise, however, is less clear. Flindt has followed one of the two paths traditionally available to ballet companies: He has tried to make Dallas Ballet a showcase for different works and styles, rather than shaping a repertoire around a single vision. It is, to cite the most prominent pair of American companies, the choice of the American Ballet Theatre rather than that of the New York City Ballet. But no company has a Balanchine at the helm, so from a practical standpoint Dallas Ballet’s strategy looks sensible.



this season’s programs are of the smorgasbord sort, with something for everyone’s taste: three full-length works (Coppelia, The Toreador and Nutcracker); a New York City Ballet evening, including the very difficult Four Temperaments; an “all-American” program (music by Copland, et al.); and an all-Fokine bill next spring.

Paradoxically, the Dallas Ballet’s problems derive from the seeming sensibleness of its direction. Flindt has staged some of his European works here, the controversial Salome, the “moderne” Miraculous Mandarin and the glitzy Three Musketeers, and has created some minor new dances for the company (Tarantelle Clas-sique, Texas on Point), none of which seems destined to take a permanent place in the repertoire of this or any other company.

As a choreographer, Flindt is more interested and more successful in reviving the Bour-nonville masterpieces (La Sylphide, Konservatoriet) on which he cut his teeth at home; The Toreador of two seasons past was a major international revival that has been undupli-cated here since. Bournonville is easy to watch:

Everyone can enjoy the generally insipid music, follow the predictable plot lines and delight in the beautiful movement, even if he doesn’t realize the creative and historic originality of the choreography. It’s like German wine: A novice can appreciate the sweetness, but it takes a connoisseur to get the subtlety.

In remaining true to Bour-nonville, Flindt has maintained a historical tradition (although his dancers have not yet developed the necessary technique), and he has done what he knows best, but he has led his company without forging a distinctive identity for it. Dallas Ballet tries to claim “world-class” status for itself (as the embarrassingly vulgar printed programs from last year announced) even though such epithets are undeserved. For all its international connections, it remains a regional company, and creative excellence is not developed by mere fiat. Great choreographers set out to make the best ballets they can with the material at hand. Here Balanchine’s exemplary American career comes to mind: from Serenade in White Plains 50 years ago, danced mainly by klutzes, through the building of a school and a company, to the final masterpieces made on, and inspired by, the last of his muses. If the boys down in marketing need advertising copy, they should have something substantial to brag about, and so far Dallas Ballet hasn’t provided a substance to match their inflated claims.



too much of Dallas Ballet’s self-congratulation is myopic and unwarranted. One has only to look at a typical audience at the Majestic (itself a theater unsuited to ballet) to sense the difference between fact and hype. It is a largely upscale crowd, board members and their friends and relatives, at least 99 percent white and often very dressed up. Ticket sales may be satisfactory, but the theater is never full. The crowd applauds politely and makes a hasty retreat to the parking lot. Perhaps they appreciate being told that they have just witnessed “world-class” dancing, but they ordinarily don’t seem overwhelmed.

A comparison with the audiences at the companies brought to town by TITAS tells a different story. Heterogeneous, demonstrative and knowledgeable, they fill McFarlin Auditorium with cheerful gratitude, not just their bodies. Under the durable leadership of Tom Adams, himself a cross between P.T. Barnum and Peter Pan, TITAS has brought major, though transient, revelations to Dallas: Alwin Nikolais, Twyla Tharp, Alvin Ailey, Pilobo-lus, Eliot Field, the Dance Theatre of Harlem. It is a list to applaud.

Adams is no artist, but he has something like genius for raising money, audiences and enthusiasm for his projects-first in Fort Worth, now in Dallas.

For fans went to Fort Worth, when Adams was in charge of the moribund Fort Worth Ballet, to see the visiting companies: Feld, the Pennsylvania Ballet and a group of City Ballet principals in the late Seventies. Adams left the Fort Worth company with a substantial surplus in its coffers, and although the company itself never had much character, it had sound economic footing.

The most spectacular visit by a dance company was that of the New York City Ballet in 1980, on one of its rare (because of the expense) forays beyond home turf. The visit was essentially choreographed by Ann Bass, whose connections to the City Ballet and especially to the School of American Ballet have given her access to the center of American dance life.

Bass is now very much the brains behind the new and revised Fort Worth Ballet, which has brought in Nanette Glushak and Michel Rahn to serve as artistic directors. The 18 newly announced dancers, with some holdovers from the company’s past few years, include many with School of American Ballet connections. The previously somnolent organization seems to be reviving.

As in art, so in ballet: Fort Worth is making a move in the dance world that may bring it national attention. In any case, Fort Worth will be the place to watch this year, if last month’s premiere is any indication. It featured NYCB’s Heather Watts and Jock Soto in Balanchine’s Rubies, a ballet that symbolically marked his company’s new association with Lincoln Center (and is therefore appropriate to other such ventures). Fort Worth Ballet may become a kind of City Ballet farm team, getting some of its dancers and much of its repertoire from that company.

So, after the October opener, the company proceeds to Nutcracker, like everyone else, and then in February assays another NYCB evening, with Merrill Ashley and Sean Lavery appearing as guest soloists in a pas de deux from Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes. The programming is ambitious, since no one is harder to dance than Balanchine, and far greater companies have fallen flat on their collective faces when trying to adapt Balanchine works to dancers untrained in his technique. But Fort Worth also includes excerpts from Square Dance, a fiercely difficult masterpiece, Valse Fantasie and Jacques d’Amboise’s 1964 Irish Fantasy.

In addition to its own three programs, Fort Worth will host an appearance by the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in April, and round out its season with three experimental programs (with some Balanchine thrown in for good measure: his great Gershwin ballet, Who Cares?) at the Scott Theater in March.

Some might criticize the decision to perpetuate the ballets of a dead master as an exercise in choreographic necrophilia, unimaginative and timid. And in fact there is something a little creepy in the Fort Worth Ballet’s claims to have replicated the School of American Ballet in its new studio in The Village at Ridgmar. But Peter Martins seems to be serving as a distant guardian angel, and with the ballet’s New York connections perhaps a new blend of the old and the new will result. Meanwhile, in the absence of any major genius on the horizon, why not imitate and preserve the best we’ve seen? Fort Worth has the Kimbell Museum-why not the next major ballet company?



A FINAL WORRY will dim the hopes of anyone in this region seriously interested in dance. As the visiting companies remind us, all great dance groups, more than other arts organizations, serve the vision and obey the commands of a single leader. Art is not democratic, and nowhere less so than in ballet.

Neither Dallas nor Fort Worth seems to have the inspired leadership that will provide a single vision, and hence an integrated artistic enterprise worthy to stand comparison with the companies and dance makers named above. At best they may become like American Ballet Theatre, which has always had trouble precisely because of its hodgepodge offerings and its lack of a distinctive style. But if this is the direction that marketing and box office principles require, then the local dance scene will become bland, tepid and ultimately impoverished.

We must hope for genius to take root in the plains.

HOT

TICKET



●ALL NEW YORK CITY BALLETPROGRAM, DALLAS BALLET,MAJESTIC THEATRE, NOV. 21-24,(744-4430). The Dallas Ballet willhave a true test of its mettle whenit’s called on to dance the difficult choreography of GeorgeBalancbine.

●FELD BALLET, SPONSORED BYT1TAS, MCFARL1N AUDITORIUM,SOUTHERN METHODISTUNIVERSITY, FEB. 21, 22,(528-5576). Eliot Feld is one ofthe more interesting and youngerchoreographers in the danceworld today with a style that islively, musical and varied.

●NEW YORK CITY BALLETEVENING, FORT WORTH BALLET,TARRANT COUNTY CONVENTIONCENTER THEATRE, FEB. 28, MAR.1, (Metro 429-1181, or817-335-9000). The Fort WorthBallet will be stretching itself onthis one, but the company is likely to pull it off with flying colors.The performance will be backedby two principal dancers fromthe New York City Ballet.

●Peking acrobats, sponsoredby titas, mcfarl1n auditorium,southern methodist universi- TY, MAR. 14, 15.(528-5576). Pe-king will be making its first visit to Dallas to show its exciting combination of ancient dances and circus gymnastics. It’s what you wish the Olympics could be.

●ALV1N A1LEY AMERICAN DANCETHEATER, SPONSORED BY FORTWORTH BALLET, TARRANT COUN-TY CONVENTION THEATRE, APRIL 21-23, (Metro 429-1181, or817-335-9000). New fork-basedblack dance troupe featuring hipjazz and modem dance.