BALLET LOSES ITS FOOTING IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Not everyone shed tears over the recent deaths of South Africa's State Theatre Ballet and State Theatre Dance Company, which received the bulk of state arts funding during the apartheid era. Independent artists had, in fact, fought for years to get a piece of that funding. Some cynics saw the demise of the companies as the natural fallout from the end of apartheid in 1994, just as some South Africans have criticized ballet as a cost-intensive, Eurocentric art form that has no place in an African country. The demise of the companies and their affiliated schools suggests that local culture is no longer dictated by apartheid policy, but it also suggests an uncertain future for classical dance and training in South Africa.

Both ballet companies were housed in the State Theater, an institution left over from the Performing Arts Council of Transvaal, which the Nationalist government established for whites only in 1963. The closure of the 37-year-old State Theatre Ballet (formerly Pact Ballet) and the 12-year-old State Theatre Dance Company (formerly Pact Dance Company) caused public outcry and the unemployment of forty State Theatre Ballet dancers and twelve State Theatre Dance Company dancers, as well as former prima ballerina and artistic director Dawn Weller and her staff. State Theatre Ballet said farewell June 23 at an emotionally charged performance of The Merry Widow. Several dancers have since left the country to dance in Chile, Hong Kong, Scandinavia and the U.S., while others have either given up classical dancing or taken commercial work.

Over its nearly forty-year tenure, State Theatre Ballet gave more than 4,000 performances of 150 ballets, performed by 1,000 dancers to national audiences estimated at 2.5 million. Because of the race laws and internal boycotting of government theaters, however, the majority of South Africa's residents never experienced Pact or the State Theatre Ballet's productions of Giselle or Swan Lake, or repertory works by George Balanchine, Choo San Goh, Paul Taylor and Val Caniparoli. Similarly, international audiences missed dancers whose touring opportunities were halted by the international boycott of apartheid.

The seventy-student school Weller established in 1994 was more racially representative of South Africa than the company itself, which was mostly white, but it was a case of too little, too late. It was shut down, as was a 3-year-old national choreography competition that was bridging the gap between ballet and contemporary dance by attracting young black South African choreographers and racially mixed audiences.

The State Theatre Dance Company, on the other hand, always had a multicultural identity and produced a first generation of black professional dancers and choreographers. Directed by Esther Nasser, the all-South African State Theatre Dance Company, which had begun to develop an international profile, took its final bow June 30 with a two-day season titled "Hot & Cool."

The axing of both companies along with the New Arts Philharmonic Orchestra Pretoria was linked to the "mothballing" of the State Theatre complex in Pretoria by Dr. Ben Ngubane, the Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. The companies were given fifteen days after the June 15 announcement to disband. The timing was disastrous: The State Theatre Ballet was scheduled to perform The Merry Widow at a national arts festival and was preparing to collaborate with the Royal Danish Ballet's touring group in July. It also withdrew from a planned tour of China in October.

The Cabinet-level decision to shutter the Pretoria companies and close the theaters was the culmination of a financial scandal first exposed in 1995. Board members Meridy Wixley and Arlene Franks discovered Pact's secret reserve fund, skimmed from a publicly funded apartheid-era subsidy. The fund was poorly reinvested in a move sanctioned by Ngubane, which compounded the company's problems.

The minister has appointed a board to decide the future of the building and develop a new arts policy, and a consortium of businessmen has leased the complex until the end of December. Some critics, however, believe the State Theatre companies made a crucial mistake by not becoming independent. Cape Town City Ballet (formerly Capab Ballet) and Jazzart Dance Theatre--both housed under the Cape Performing Arts Board umbrella--became nonprofit companies in 1997 and 1998, respectively. Their first-ever collaborative season, "Beyond the Borders," was a major success in July. But even the Cape Town City Ballet's financial situation is tenuous. In the worst-case scenario, says its executive chair, Elizabeth Triegaardt, the company will retain a core of thirty dancers and an administrator, and all other functions will be contracted out when required. Ironically, while South African independent contemporary dance is making a splash in Africa and Europe right now, it lacks the infrastructure it would likely need in order to survive at home. Adrienne Sichel