BELEAGUERED FOLK TROUPE PINS HOPE ON `IMMIGRANTS'.

Aman Folk Ensemble, one of the nation's oldest folk dance troupes, breathes life into its radical new mission with The Immigrants, a full-length work celebrating America's cultural diversity through traditional music and dance imported from around the world. The new piece concludes as costumed performers joyfully execute vastly differing rhythms from India, Armenia, England, South Africa, and elsewhere to the unifying beat of an Appalachian air.

"We're less of a museum of what was," says executive director Romalyn Tilghman, "and more of an expression of what is, today, in this country."

Aman's young dancers had reason to be radiant when the piece made its West Coast debut. The Immigrants is the company's first evening-length work, and its opening suite was commissioned by the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the county's esteemed cultural linchpin. Aman had also just launched a four-week tour--up from a week the previous season--and was marking its second anniversary in its first real home, a spacious former dance school in a bustling art colony.

Despite all this, Amen is teetering on the brink of insolvency. Although arguably unique in the nation for its ethnic breadth, it has been unable to erase a four-year-old deficit, now at $60,000, roughly one-tenth of its current budget, let alone hire more than one full-time administrator or adequately pay its nine full-time musicians and dancers.

"We have a lot of wonderful things going on," says Tilghman, "but we've not been able to raise enough money to service the debt and to build the staffing we need to keep the organization secure."

Even such august institutions as the Martha Graham Dance Company have been threatened by dwindling late-century private and public support. But Aman's demise "would send a very sad message" about how little Americans value the arts, says former Dance/USA director Martin Cohen, who managed Amen in the '80s. "The company is known nationally, it has toured internationally many times, and it is an important part of the dance culture in this country."

During peak times in the early '70s, Amen toured roughly twelve weeks a year and employed as many as twenty-six dancers and musicians. Then, as today, audiences heard live music and saw re-creations of traditional dances. Also as today, Aman occasionally wrestled with serious financial troubles. But they were always overcome.

The company's current predicament began in 1994, when the first of three blows beset the troupe in the form of a massive earthquake that rumbled across Los Angeles.

Aman's downtown L.A. quarters were condemned and the troupe found itself out on the street. Soon afterward, the National Endowment for the Arts budget was slashed, severely cutting Aman's annual grant. Then the company lost its longtime director, who, burned out by it all, resigned.

Dance companies in Southern California (which has never supported a major resident troupe for long) may be able to cope with one, maybe two bits of bad luck at once, "but any more than that and the situation starts becoming catastrophic," says Michael Alexander, an Aman trustee and former dancer who has made his living within the area's performing arts community since the mid-'60s.

Tilghman, a former NEA administrator, was hired as a consultant in 1996. Despite the dire situation at hand, she signed on full time soon after, "seduced by the wonderful work," she says. One of her major moves was to relocate the company to Orange County. That meant giving up annual L.A. city and county grants, plus many longtime patrons, but Tilghman was aware of Orange County's robust arts patronage--witness plans to expand the $73 million Orange County Performing Arts Center to the tune of $200 million. The center has also helped fund Aman's extensive school programs for the past five years. This year, the company will reach some 60,000 youths through 700 regional performances and workshops.

"Aman is one of Southern California's treasures, and we need to share it with the world," says Troy Botello, the Performing Arts Center's education director. Perhaps Aman's best hope is The Immigrants, which aims to celebrate what happens when various cultures bump up against each other to create new, all-American traditions. Its theme is E pluribus unum--"out of many, one"-- and the hope is that it will bring Aman greater visibility and new donors.

But as of press time, Tilghman had not been able to book the piece in Orange County or find major new donors there. And reviews of the piece, which will soon be performed in Minnesota and Iowa, have been mixed. Morale among the company members, stressed by the money woes, wavers.

And Tilghman isn't giving up. "This company doesn't deserve to die," she says, especially now, given the continued eruption of hate crimes nationwide. "We teach children every day how to express respectful curiosity about another person's culture. It's what Aman is all about."