DANCE : Partners No More : The Joffrey’s contract with the Music Center nears its end amid reports of missteps by both partners in a bi-coastal experiment

When Gerald Arpino took the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for curtain calls at the end of the Joffrey Ballet’s 1990 spring engagement, his appearance signified more than the traditional final bow for the company and its artistic director.

On May 1--the eve of the Joffrey’s opening night in Los Angeles--Arpino had resigned from the company during a power struggle with the company’s board of directors, taking his and the late Robert Joffrey’s repertory of ballets with him. At the same time, a number of Arpino sympathizers resigned from the board. The company’s debt stood at $1.8 million--which included $800,000 in overdue federal income taxes.

The messy imbroglio played itself out during the season. Board co-chairman and L.A. industrialist David Murdock--who had reportedly favored diminishing Arpino’s authority-- submitted his resignation. Arpino prevailed and he returned to the company he had co-founded in 1956. On closing night, Arpino’s appearance was as much to celebrate his off-stage victory as the company’s on-stage efforts.

But one year later, the Joffrey has lost its resident status at the Music Center. Ironically, the company loses its contract amid charges of financial insolvency just when its debt--now at about $300,000--is the lowest it’s been in years.

It appears that while Arpino may have won last spring’s battle, the Joffrey has lost the war.

Lest there remain any confusion, the Joffrey is dancing at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion May 7-June 2. Its 35th anniversary gala will feature four Los Angeles premieres. And negotiations are under way for a Joffrey “Nutcracker” at the Music Center this Christmas, as well as future Southern California performances by the company in years to come.

“The L.A. audience is definitely going to see the Joffrey again, and hopefully regularly,” asserted the Joffrey’s new executive director, Robert Yesselman, in a recent phone conversation from New York.

But things are different now for the Joffrey and Los Angeles. An era has ended, along with the experiment of establishing the country’s first bi-coastal ballet company.

Rumors abound that personal squabbles and the management difficulties between the Joffrey and the Music Center led to the end of their contractual bond. Arpino said that the Joffrey was never able to become a strong enough part of the community because it was never able to secure adequate rehearsal and teaching space here. Others blame the fallout on the strain of two different boards of directors and two different sets of egos, awkwardly separated by phone lines and thousands of miles. Both sides acknowledge that neither side played the game particularly well.

“I could sit and analyze why this happened, and there are a multitude of reasons,” said Music Center president Esther Wachtell. “I really believed we could make it work, but it simply didn’t--that’s the truth. There were many personalities involved, and it just didn’t. . . . There’s no point in bashing the Joffrey. There is nothing to be gained at this point by me telling you details.”

Los Angeles investment banker Michael Tennenbaum, who has served as vice chairman of the Joffrey since March, agrees that the Joffrey’s problems with the Music Center must now become so much dirty water under the bridge.

Tennenbaum offered this cautious assessment of whether bad blood had anything to do with the Joffrey losing its residency. “Let me just say that I don’t know . . . of any individuals who were pressing the Music Center to get rid of the Joffrey out of spite,” Tennenbaum said during an interview at the Century City penthouse offices of Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., a New York-based investment banking company. “There was certainly speculation about it, because whatever paranoia might have infected the Music Center, I can guarantee there was an equal amount of it at the Joffrey board level.

“There were people who were associated with the Music Center who were dying to get rid of the Joffrey,” Tennenbaum added. “It had become such a burden of time and money. . . . I think it had been a tough couple of years, and I was unsuccessful in persuading them that things were going to be different.

“And I have sympathy for that. They didn’t have (the Joffrey’s) financial statements, and they had always had bad financial surprises. The Music Center took the position--sensibly, I think--that if the resident company continued to screw up, they were going to be penalizing the other (resident) companies that were doing well and didn’t have to keep coming back for more money . . . that would be reinforcing dysfunctional behavior.”

Said the Joffrey’s Yesselman: “I’m a new guy here, so I’m not touched by that history. But I certainly have heard all the stories, and both sides, and I can honestly say, I don’t know that there were any villains.

“It is my impression that in the first years of that arrangement, going back 10 years, it was a model of its kind. We had some very wealthy Los Angeles philanthropists who thought it was important for Los Angeles to be the base for a world-class ballet company . . . but the basic structure is unwieldy.”

Now that problems have been resolved and the Joffrey’s spring season here ensured, it’s easy for both sides to maintain an aura of civility. But during most of March, calling the relationship between the Joffrey and the Music Center “tense” would have been an understatement.

To recap: On March 4, the Music Center announced that it would not renew the Joffrey Ballet’s contract beyond June 30.

Like the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Music Center Opera, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum, the 35-year-old Joffrey Ballet had enjoyed resident status at the Music Center--and the financial support that comes with it. Founded in Seattle and long based in New York City, the Joffrey Ballet became bi-coastal in 1983, when the Music Center became its second home. The Joffrey’s annual performances were subsidized by amounts ranging from $615,000 in 1983 to a high of $2.3 million in 1986. In 1991, the Music Center allotted $1.2 million for the Joffrey.

The Music Center terminated that longstanding pact when the Joffrey, beset by longstanding debt and internal management problems, failed to meet a deadline to prove that it was in good financial shape--or to guarantee $725,000 against ticket sales for future performances. The company asked for an extension; it didn’t get it. The Music Center said it could not afford to hold the Joffrey’s traditional spring dates at the busy Dorothy Chandler Pavilion open past the deadline; it had other suitors. With dispatch, the center booked in the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 1992 instead.

Then, the next week, Music Center officials dropped another bomb: They speculated that the Joffrey might not even be able to cover its expenses to come here for its scheduled 1991 performances, suggesting its spring season was in jeopardy and revealing that the Joffrey still owed the Music Center $250,000, resulting from loans made to the company last year.

On March 28, the Joffrey called a press conference to confirm that the company would indeed perform at the Music Center, which had agreed to forgive $150,000 of the company’s outstanding $250,000 debt. Although it was not revealed at that press conference, Tennenbaum said later that the Joffrey’s spring season at the Music Center was also made possible by two donors who had asked to remain nameless--one a man in Los Angeles who had donated much time and money to the Joffrey in the past, and the other a “woman who lives in the San Francisco area.” The combined total of those two donations, Tennenbaum said, totaled more than $1 million.

In addition, Tennenbaum and other board members once again dug into their pockets--”a lot more than they planned.” Tennenbaum added that the Joffrey managed to cut corners on its touring expenses for Chicago and Iowa City, streamlining the company’s office operations and using taped rather than live music in isolated instances.

A successful New York season helped too. Tennenbaum said the performances Feb. 26-March 17 at the State Theater averaged 60%-capacity audiences and brought in several hundred thousand dollars more than had been anticipated, since those concerts were marketed during the Gulf War and the season opened in the midst of a deepening recession.

Adding the last-minute donations, higher-than-expected ticket revenues and money saved from the company’s operatiions, the Joffrey was able to put together almost $2 million by March 4, the date the Music Center announced it would not renew the Joffrey’s contract.

Tennenbaum said that although uncertainty about the Joffrey’s spring season at the Music Center initially slowed ticket sales, as of April 22 sales for the engagement had already exceeded the dollar amount of tickets sold before the Joffrey’s 1990 opening night. “We are already close to $1 million,” he said. Tennenbaum also said that the board had just authorized the company to fulfill its performance obligations in San Francisco, which had remained tentative even after the board voted to send the Joffrey to Los Angeles and Sacramento.

The company still owes the Music Center $100,000, which will be withheld from the $400,000 the Joffrey would normally receive from the Music Center for performing here in May if it had no debts. The actual cost of presenting the Joffrey here, Tennenbaum said, is about $1.25 million; the hastily raised funds will keep the Joffrey from incurring further debt, but hardly ensure the company’s long-term future.

The end of the Joffrey’s residency at the Music Center begs two questions:

What is the Joffrey going to do now?

What is the Music Center going to do about presenting dance in L.A.?

The first question is easier to answer. Yesselman and Arpino assert that the Joffrey will continue to maintain a presence in L.A. “Oh, I love Los Angeles,” gushed Arpino by phone from Chicago, the company’s initial tour stop after New York. “The Joffrey will be here, whatever takes place at the Music Center. I hope (the company’s relationship with the Music Center) will be beneficial, but as far as the Joffrey is concerned, we are a part of Los Angeles and will always be.”

While the Joffrey will most likely surface in Los Angeles for years to come, it no longer has the cushy assurance of an annual subsidy. Yesselman said that the company--whose tour stops this season included Paris, Athens, Hong Kong and Taipei--projects a total operating budget of $11.7 million for the fiscal year 1991.

This year, the Music Center subsidy represents about 10% of the Joffrey’s operating budget. On one hand, the company will no longer have to cover the costs of performing here; on the other, there is no guarantee that the Joffrey will find another city willing to subsidize its performing costs like the Music Center did--so, if the Joffrey heads for another city in the spring, the company may have to pay more money from its own pockets.

One thing the Joffrey will not be doing any time soon is switching to the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Although that facility’s president, Thomas R. Kendrick, says Orange County may be interested in presenting the Joffrey in the future, the Joffrey is not part of its recently announced 1991-92 dance season.

Nor is Orange County interested in acquiring or creating a resident dance company in the near future. Besides not having the rehearsal space needed by a resident company, Kendrick said the center prefers to bring in a range of dance styles through touring companies.

Although reticent about which locales, Arpino said several cities have approached the Joffrey about becoming the company’s second home. Another spokesman for the company noted that many American dance companies, including the Joffrey, have cut back on their American touring schedule in favor of visits to Europe and the Far East, lured by countries that still have the funds and willingness to present dance.

Both Tennenbaum and Yesselman say that the company’s first priority is not to establish another “second city” for the Joffrey, but rather organize committees in several major cities that would be responsible for some of the company’s fund-raising. Yesselman said the Joffrey needs to stay in those cities for six or eight weeks, not only performing but teaching, rehearsing and taking outreach programs to the schools. “A ‘second-city,’ dual-board doesn’t work,” Yesselman said. “But what does work is becoming a part of the life of another city.

“It needs to be a city without a strong regional company, so that you don’t get involved in carpet-bagging issues and insiders and outsiders and all of that kind of thing.”

Los Angeles will need to consider all of those issues as the Music Center makes plans for dance here in the future. Wachtell said the Music Center will not be able to create or acquire a resident dance company for the next few years. In the meantime, the center is in the process of creating an advisory board to plan visits from touring companies, as well as to look into the possibility of developing a resident dance company from scratch.

“I would like to believe that Los Angeles, with its artistic resources and its own very special personality, diversity and needs, its own geography, all of those things, can take a problem in the arts--which is dance these days--and do something very special with it. Since we’ve got a track record of doing it with opera, I think we can do that with dance. It’s so soon that it’s nothing but a dream.”

The Joffrey’s Yesselman believes that such a dream could run into some harsh realities. “To create one from scratch is a real tough chore,” he said. “I don’t want to comment on the Music Center’s abilities or L.A.’s abilities, because certainly there are many artistically talented arts people in L.A. But I think it’s a very difficult time to be talking about forming a dance company when the existing dance companies are doing everything they can to carry on.”

Luring an already existing company to a city makes more sense, Yesselman added. “The cities, without very much effort and much developmental process, get world-class performing arts in their city. And you know, if we are looking at an oversupply situation, it seems that we should use the resources we have more efficiently, rather than trying to create new resources.”

Joyce Moffatt, vice president and general manager of the San Francisco Ballet and former manager of American Ballet Theatre, said any major city can create a dance company provided that it is willing to commit the money and the time. She’s not sure, however, that Los Angeles is.

During her days with American Ballet Theatre, Moffatt said the Los Angeles audience was the least likely to buy tickets to performances that did not feature established stars. Moffatt and several other dance-watchers suggested that the only way for Los Angeles to create a successful dance company is to snare some star dancers away from other companies.

“The L.A. audience, because of the film industry, tends to want things quicker,” she said. “They want to zap the channels quicker than it takes to develop a dance company. . . . You don’t just add water and get a company.”

Half-jokingly, Moffatt suggested that dance companies named after their own city--rather than their home state or the company’s artistic director--tend to garner more local support. “Someone should do a Ph.D thesis on this,” she said. But even if a new company at the Music Center were named the Los Angeles Swan Lakers, Moffatt and others agree that dance presents its own unique set of problems.

“The process is quite different, there are greater risks (than with opera),” said Moffatt. “If you do 18 ‘Carmens,’ you know what the chances are of succeeding. You don’t if you take a risk on a new, emerging choreographer.”

And in today’s economy, good luck to the Music Center in finding a dance company whose financial situation is much better than the Joffrey’s, offered Tennenbaum. “I would not be surprised if, after a period of looking around, the Joffrey doesn’t begin to look pretty good to them again,” he said.