Achieving a balance.

It's calm and quiet here. The sun starts to set. It's open sky--and here the curtain opens." These were Terry Orr's words as the former American Ballet Theatre ballet master rehearsed Pennsylvania Ballet for last season's production of Agnes de Mille's Rodeo. For PB these days, the skies are also relatively calm, but artistic director Roy Kaiser still recalls one day in 1982 when storm clouds had gathered: "The company folded. We showed up for rehearsal...and there was a sign on the door saying, `Don't change for rehearsals: Meeting in Studio A.'"

Still, PB recovered. Although it faced another near-shutdown in 1991 and has had six managing directors and four artistic directors in the past ten years, this is a survivor organization that regenerates itself against all odds. Kaiser, who had joined the company in 1979, progressed through the ranks to principal (1980); assistant ballet master (1987); ballet master (1992); associate artistic director under Christopher d'Amboise, his immediate predecessor (1993); interim artistic director (1994); and artistic director (1995).

"We'll have to teach you a song to tap to," Off tells his Rodeo dancers and hums "America," from West Side Story as a way to rehearse the Cowgirl, Head Wrangler, and Champion Roper trio for Scene II. "I know that song," pants Jeffrey Gribler while tapping. "I just can't tap that fast!" This company is upbeat, good-natured, bouncy, and infected by the mood of the ballet and Orr's easy, embracing style. His staging is outstanding, and Rodeo is beautifully performed and well received. (Now that Orr has become artistic director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, there may be more collaboration between the two companies.)

PB moves into its thirty-fourth year this season, and a period of continuity in leadership is long overdue. Ironically, in spite of changes at the top, the core of dancers has remained remarkably stable. As one of its anchors, Kaiser comments, "the nucleus of this company has remained consistent from year to year for a long time, and that's good." Several have called PB their artistic home for ten years. Gribler (principal and ballet master), Tamara Hadley (ballet mistress and former ballerina), and William DeGregory (principal and Hadley's husband) have been on board for some two decades and are still going strong.

Kaiser, Hadley, and Gribler are a united artistic team with unwavering commitment to the organization's continuity, vitality, and artistic growth. And Kaiser's real-world family overlaps with his artistic one: Kelley McManus, his wife, was a dancer in the company, and two of his brothers danced with PB at different times. Kaiser offers a peer-based, in-house leadership that PB principal and former Joffrey ballerina Leslie Carothers sees as "an easy fit" and Gribler characterizes as "the most trusting."

Kaiser muses, "I always kind of envisioned myself going off somewhere, finding a younger company that was looking for some leadership and wanted somebody to come in and take it to the next level and help it develop. And I'm still surprised that this is now where I am.

"When I started as artistic director," he continues, "we had to cut back the budget to $5.7 million, which, for a company this size [thirty-two dancers and six apprentices] is very bare-bones. But we were looking at an accumulated deficit of $2.3 million. I took eight weeks away from the dancers [to make it a thirty-two-week season]: it was do or die."

Kaiser's strategy is to proceed cautiously to avoid the pitfalls of the past. Perhaps that is why, for the first eighteen months, his artistic choices seemed timid. In contrast, and in spite of the ongoing threat of the money monster, the 1996-97 season was strong and sure. "We're constantly looking at new ways to do things," says Kaiser, "where it won't affect the work, where we don't have to cut into the bone of the organization, although we cut through the flesh."

Last year the company achieved a balanced budget and reduced its deficit to under $300,000, enabling it to qualify for a $700,000 grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Subscriptions are up considerably from last year, the highest since 1990.

Like his counterparts at ABT and Boston Ballet, Kaiser has initiated a bold outreach program to the community--a sweeping effort to make ballet more accessible to Philadelphians in general and children in particular. There was the adult "Singles Night Out" series, with a reception included in the ticket price; the "Children's Enchantment Fund" to bring 2,000 needy children to Nutcracker performances; the "Family Matinee" series for ballets like Coppelia, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, and a major ongoing school program.

Kaiser warms to his topic: "I'm very proud of the in-house workbooks we put together for the students. They include everything from talking about the art form in general--how dancers train, what their workday is like, how a ballet is put together--to a specific ballet that they're going to see. Last season we filmed [corps dancer and choreographer] Meredith Rainey teaching some of the students from our ballet school the Knights' Dance from Romeo and Juliet. We sent that out and got letters back from the schools saying that they pushed desks aside to do the dance. If they wanted, they could choreograph something and send it back to us. We received some of those. They were wonderful."

His outreach program is a good illustration of Kaiser's personality. He has a sense of balance in matters of budget, challenges to dancers, offerings to audiences, and repertory. The company is strong on evening-length and shorter classics, and with good reason: these works attract new audiences. The repertory is augmented by a small dose of contemporary works by such choreographers as Lar Lubovitch, Lynne Taylor-Corbett, and Hans van Manen, and is rounded out by the company's performances of the Balanchine repertory, which is one of its strong suits. When Benjamin Harkarvy, Christopher d'Amboise, and Robert Weiss were at the helm, they also served as resident choreographers; Kaiser's strengths are in directing, coaching, and teaching. It was also clear that, due to past catastrophes and present instabilities, he would need to be a full-time artistic director. What he has done is to give choreographic opportunities to company members Matthew Neenan, Cydney Spohn, and Rainey.

Neenan's Vicissitudes, the runaway hit of the spring sea son, revealed a talented young choreographer who may be another Christopher Wheeldon (they are the same age, twenty-four). Having long been unable to afford original works, this company would be well served by a talented resident choreographer, and Neenan (and, perhaps, Rainey) may be one. Vicissitudes wag, performed on a program with van Manen's dramatic yet ironic Grosse Fuge and Lubovitch's playful, humorous Waiting for the Sunrise. Besides their choreographic integrity, these three offerings were wonderful ensemble vehicles that allowed the dancers to show the multiplicity of their talents in diverse contemporary settings. They are excellent at humor, parody, and irony. At times it has seemed that one of the big aesthetic issues for this company is finding the right repertory. Neenan's work--made on the company by one of their own--shows what is possible.

The 1997-98 season had opened in October with an all-Balanchine program: Serenade, The Four Temperaments (two PB favorites), and the company premiere of Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. Now that its requisite Nutcracker season has passed, the company this month is pairing Balanchine's Prodigal Son with Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux's Menage a Quatre, originally choreographed for PB in 1984. March will see Balanchine's Swan Lake, Ashton's Les Patineurs, and Lar Lubovitch's Concerto Six Twenty-two, which the company has performed eloquently in past seasons. April offerings will include a world premiere by Kevin O'Day, coupled with Paul Taylor's Company B. The spring season winds up in May with Ben Stevenson's Cinderella.

In spite of the ups and downs of his artistic home and the arts in America, Kaiser remains hopeful. His wish is to expand the season and to increase the visibility and performance opportunities for this talented company. Surprisingly, he feels "really fortunate that I'm in dance, because I do think that I can make a case for it. It's accessible. I go out and speak for groups all over town. I go to colleges, and all I want to do is get them to come see the company. By the end of my talk, I think most people feel comfortable coming to the ballet because they realize that dance is so basic. They just need to come in and sit down and watch. They can become as educated as they want to or they can just see it because they like to see beautiful people moving onstage. And we all dance.

"It seems like it's a depressed time for the arts in this country, and that is true, to a point. But still there are artists and institutions doing very good work. There is a future, and we may have to find new ways to make that future happen. We see that everywhere across the board in every art form, especially the performing arts. But it's doable, and it's been done before at various times through history, so let's stick to it and make it happen. That's the attitude we've adopted here. We're an organization that is proving to work, and that means we will continue."

Kaiser is committed to the organization. He is also passionately devoted to dance. As the father of a kindergarten-aged son, he talks about "making sure that my grandchildren will be able to enjoy this art form." When asked who his dance heroes are, he implied, after citing Fred Astaire, that the hero is the art form itself. "When you watch dancers at a rehearsal," says Kaiser, "everyone has something. If you look you, do find that anybody who is dedicated to the art form and works at it has something to offer. That's pretty great."

Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Dance Magazine correspondent in Philadelphia, is author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts, published by Greenwood Publishers.