Troupe Leaps Back : North Carolina Dance Theater Survives Crisis, to Play Saddleback

Like many arts organizations in recent years, North Carolina Dance Theater found itself facing a financial crisis.

“Everyone just assumed that we were OK,” artistic director Salvatore Aiello said from company studios in Winston-Salem.

“But around Christmas of last year, we looked in the bank account, and there was no money to pay the dancers. Nothing had been done to raise money we needed for the year. . . . There was talk of the company folding.”

Hard news indeed for one of the most respected regional ballet companies in the country.

North Carolina Dance Theater had been founded in 1970 by Robert Lindgren as a student troupe affiliated with the state-supported North Carolina School of the Arts. Since then, it had grown and became a kind of feeder company for larger dance institutions.

But the company had already established its own identity--a mix of ballet and modern dance--promoted through yearly national tours and two European tours.

When the company found the till empty, it began making layoffs and cutbacks and issued what Aiello described as “a serious cry for help.”

“It was frightening,” he said. “Fortunately, a lot of people have answered that call. We’re back on the ground again, and things are looking up. We have a stronger board and a clearer look (at the) future. Our recent performances in New York were very successful.

“However, what arts organization is feeling solid? It’s a constant struggle.”

In its first California visit in 4 years, the company will arrive Monday at Saddleback College with Aiello, a new artistic director, at the helm.

A former member of the Harkness Ballet and Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet (1971-78), Aiello became artistic director of the Carolina company in 1985 after joining it in 1979.

“It wasn’t a takeover,” Aiello said. “It was a very slow progression, which started in 1979. I was brought in someday to take over the company. Basically, I was running the show from 1979, with the exception of putting in repertory and fund raising.”

During the Carolinians’ recent successful New York run, however, Aiello came under some fire from New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff, who raised the question of whether the company was beginning to become a vehicle for his own choreography at the expense of giving dancers enough experience in traditional ballets.

“I do not intend to be the focus of the company,” Aiello said. “I always considered myself a choreographer. . . . During the financial crisis, we pulled work together for no money. I’m cheap. I don’t charge for my choreography. So productions cost $90 or $150.

“So we ended up the year with a body of work of my own because I couldn’t bring in outside choreographers.

“Actually, I (had) supposed I would be bombed royally when I showed my work in New York. That I came out as well as I did proved something to myself, proved something to my board and the dancers--but to me primarily. . . . The only thing that saved me (during the crisis) was the opportunity to be creative.”

Aiello insisted that he will keep the traditional mix of ballet and modern dance works, created by such diverse choreographers as Bournonville, Balanchine, Helgi Tomasson, Lar Lubovitch, Elisa Monte, Senta Driver and Nina Wiener.

“One of the things that happened last year with my own work (being) done a lot, we held to the same mix, doing classical and contemporary works--they were just mine,” Aiello said. “My plans for the future are to do . . . certainly a lot more new works and more important choreographers, as well as the newer, more experimental works coming up.”

Aiello cited several reasons for dancers being drawn to his company: “A dancer in our company can get dance experience--more time on stage, more time with a choreographer, who might take 4 weeks to create a work--which involves class (and) rehearsal--so he can impress a real different style on the dancers.”

The close working relationship with the choreographer “also gives our dancers more of an opportunity to be chosen for a lead. So out of the corps could come a principal (dancer) for a ballet that I would never think of.”

Once trained, however, dancers are likely to be wooed away to bigger companies. Former Carolinians have gone to the Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, the Lar Lubovitch Dance company and the Netherlands Dance Theater, among others.

“They’re stolen,” Aiello said. “I get angry. But in a sense I’m also very proud because I’ve developed them.”

Sometimes, however, the flow is in the other direction. The company has drawn dancers from the Washington Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet and Royal Winnipeg Ballet, among others.

The most recent new member is the charismatic Mel A. Tomlinson, a former New York City Ballet principal dancer. A native of Raleigh, N.C., Tomlinson joined the company earlier this year as dancer and education director. He was last seen locally with the New York City Ballet at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in October, 1986.

Recently, there have been reports that the whole company may be raided as Charlotte tries to woo the company away from Winston-Salem to its own $38-million Performing Arts Center, expected to be finished in 1992. Under the deal, Charlotte would reportedly ante up about $500,000 a year to support the company.

Aiello squelched the reports, without fully shutting the door, however: “There are no further developments about that. We have not had any formal offers. . . . But the affiliation is being talked about.”

North Carolina Dance Theater will appear at 8 p.m. Monday at Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway in Mission Viejo. The company will dance Act III from Bournonville’s “Napoli,” Rick McCullough’s “By Lamplight” (Rachmaninoff) and two works by company artistic director Salvatore Aiello: “Notturno” (Schubert) and “Journey” (Arnold). Tickets: $11-$13. Information: (714) 582-4656.