Ballet Arizona: ballet blooms in the desert.

A mid the majestic saguaros, giant agaves, and natural grandeur of the Grand Canyon State, a ballet company formed by a board of trustees who agreed to disagree eleven years ago is making artistic strides as gutsy as the gentleman's agreement that brought it into existence. Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, Ballet Arizona brings refreshing exuberance, pristine technical abilities, and dramatic strength to an eclectic repertoire that runs the gamut from the nineteenth-century evening-length classics to works created by the emerging choreographers of this generation.

Michael Uthoff at the helm has put the company on the fast track since taking artistic control in 1992 following the resignation of Jean-Paul Comelin. His commanding physical presence, gregarious brand of honesty, expansive artistic vision, and ability to surround himself with the right people have lifted the company out of its murky past to explore its potential. As a result, Uthoff is currently pursuing touring engagements in Hawaii and Mexico - and giving serious consideration to testing the company's mettle on the national level with a New York City engagement.

The timing could not be better. The growing number of regionally based professional ballet companies that are now winning popular and critical acclaim there is a good indicator that Manhattan critics no longer assume that professional regional companies today are simply better-funded versions of the civic ballets of old. As a dance critic in Oklahoma since 1977, I have watched several civic companies in the Southwest outgrow their civic titles and provincialism and seen their audiences mature with them.

According to Uthoff, regional audiences as a result are fast becoming as sophisticated as their East and parts. "That's good for dance everywhere," he bluntly says. "And, who knows, maybe it will give the future of dance in America a shot in the arm." To make dance more audience-friendly in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, and Tucson, Uthoff, assistant artistic director Donald Dadey, and the artists who have created or staged a work on the program come onstage to answer questions from the audience. "It's amazing how many people stay to participate and ask really good questions," he says.

A highly successful production of Carmina Burana created by Uthoff s father, Ernst, opened the season in October; it featured the Phoenix Symphony, the Phoenix Bach Choir Festival Chorus, and the Phoenix Boys Choir performing the Carl Orff score. Then the company presented its annual nonsubscription program, created in collaboration with three local visual artists and dedicated to new works.

At the November 3 opening performance of its "Collaborations" program in the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, the results of Uthoff's audience-outreach efforts were obvious. Although the sold-out crowd didn't stay to ask questions following the debut of new works created by Neta Pulvermacher, Peter Pucci, Dadey, and Uthoff, they did give Pucci's breathtaking Trio for the End of Time a rare standing ovation. Set to a score by Arvo Part and featuring Miguel Garcia, Eric Roberts, and Benjamin Westafer, Trio revolves around the physical and metaphysical elements of the Christ figure as manifested in the image of the Trinity. The sheer force of Pucci's choreography was well matched by the technical prowess of his dancers and Garcia's riveting presence. Nothing, however, matched the visual impact of six dancers clad in angel wings descending from the back of the stage to form a circle around the three figures at the conclusion of the work.

The fragile eloquence and haunting imagery of Pulvermacher's Young Green/Fresh Grass, set to a score by Robert Schumann, also drew enthusiastic audience response. The Israeli-born choreographer's enigmatic use of oranges within the work and as a backdrop of luscious, full-color projections that offset the dancers' white-on-white costumes created an unexpected point of reference for the piece's free-flowing exploration of human emotion.

Considering the fact that Uthoff and Dadey serve as Ballet Arizona's resident choreographers, it was interesting to see that their latest creations were as provocative as those of Pulvermacher and Pucci. Dadey's gentle translation of the pain of human loss into movement punctuated by spectacular tableaux celebrating the beauty of the human body in Doors of Perception was outstanding.

Uthoff's high-speed La Vareda featuring popular ethnic dance idioms, highlighted the technical versatility of company dancers. Particularly impressive were Laura Carruthers's sensational Highland reel, Jeremiah O'Connor's haunting tango, and Mariano Albano, Christine Bove, Mariusz Ostrowski, and Britt Juleen's fiery mambo.

Although its November 3 opening night also marked the beginning of the Phoenix Suns' 1995-96 season. Ballet Arizona still drew a full house, an indication it has developed a loyal following. One boost in public awareness occurred after the company was named the official ballet company of Arizona by Governor Fife Symington in 1993. Uthoff explains that "we fulfilled the dreams of the company's founding board of trustees, and we also became eligible for a larger range of available cultural grants."

Chuckling, he adds, "That was a turning point for the company and a far cry from what I found when I arrived here in August 1992. I thought I had seen it all during my twenty years as founding director of Hartford Ballet, but I discovered that that wasn't the case. The first thing I did after looking at the books was tell the board we had to postpone the opening of the season until The Nutcracker. The company was in a financial crisis and we needed extra time to raise funds and pay off some debts.

"To avoid hurting the dancers, I asked the board to fire me and use my salary to pay them during that time. I knew I could wait to be reimbursed until after The Nutcracker, but they had no other means of support. The board agreed and accepted my request to keep our deal a secret from the dancers to prevent anyone from attaching some misconceived sense of obligation to me because of it." With a deep, resounding laugh Uthoff adds, "So, now I guess they can read about it!"

Knowing full well that his dancers needed to keep working, Uthoff suggested that they present their own choreographers' workshop. "I told them to take advantage of the theater we had booked for the originally scheduled season opener and to use the studios. They did, and it has since become a popular annual event."

Dadey proved an ally at this time. He had served as principal dancer and artistic coordinator during the lapse between Comelin's departure and Uthoff's arrival. "I wanted to stop dancing and continue my management position," Dadey recalls. "Instead Uthoff blustered, `It isn't a case of wanting you to stay on, I need you to stay on.'"

Company rehearsal director Katharine Frey, who was also doing double duty by keeping the company's affiliated school functioning, threw her support behind Uthoff as well. All twenty-four Ballet Arizona dancers followed suit - and not for a lack of other job offers; they decided to stay with Uthoff because they wanted to. Sybille Acatos, a stunning dancer and former member of Zurich Ballet, cites the one-on-one coaching and variety of challenging roles the company offers as two reasons why the company attracts and holds good dancers.

Acatos says: "In a company with more than sixty dancers, you don't have those opportunities so important to the development of a dancer. And it is impossible to avoid being typecast." Uthoff contends that "the ongoing financial dilemma American Ballet Theatre is caught up in and the reorganization of the Joffrey Ballet are changing dancers' attitudes. They are becoming more concerned about what they dance than where."

As the son of Lola Botka and Ernst Uthoff, charter members of the Jooss Ballet, and founding directors of Chilean National Ballet, Uthoff was raised in an environment that embraced the universality of dance rather than the limitations of any single style. He says, "I was influenced by Antony Tudor and Jose Limon at Juilliard, and ultimately joined Limon's company. From there Joffrey invited me to join his company, and, as many wonderful roles as I performed, the highlight of that experience was creating my first ballet for the company in 1967. Not long after I discovered that the challenge of choreographing was more creatively stimulating than dancing, I accepted an offer to establish Hartford Ballet. At some point it dawned on me that my forte was being able to see the big picture and make the right things happen to get there."

Gesturing toward a floor-to-ceiling quilt covering the better part of a twelve-foot wall in his office, Uthoff explains that it was made by the dancers, board, and staff members of the Hartford troupe as a memento of their twenty years together. "And now I'm here, engaged in some of the same battles I fought in Hartford.

"I put my dancers first, and will not compromise the artistic quality of the product we put onstage. When I started working with my dancers, I realized they needed to get more in touch with their bodies. So I set several of my early works on them and watched them find new muscle memory performing them." Uthoff's relationship with his dancers and board is akin to that of the oyster to the pearl. "It's my job to push the right buttons to make all of us demand more of ourselves and eliminate the potential for complacency."

In 1993 Uthoff lightened the load he and Dadey shared by hiring Singapore-born Kee-Juan Han to take over the School of Ballet Arizona. A former soloist with Boston Ballet, Han is a strict taskmaster and enthusiastic coach. In addition to doubling the school's enrollment since he arrived, he is a member of the Arizona State University faculty, and was recently selected to direct the dance program for the Arizona School for the Arts.

Students in that program take three ballet and two modern classes a week in the Ballet Arizona facility, and initial funding of $50,000 has allowed the addition of a third studio and other improvements to the former tile warehouse.

It was not until January 1995,.however, that Uthoff put the final piece of his management team in place by appointing Gray Montague executive director. "Key staff appointments had been political footballs until that point," Uthoff says, "and I knew we needed an executive director whose reputation in the field of dance management preceded him. I also wanted someone who shared my beliefs. I do not consider failure an option. I believe praise is a better teacher than harsh corrections, and I know you have to prove yourself to get ahead because no one owes you anything."

As the founding executive director of Parsons Dance Company, Montague was well aware of the difficult task of running a ballet company according to valid business practices. In addition to his appetite for working long hours, replacing chaos with order, and establishing solid administrative procedures and policies, he has an absolutely bizarre wit that makes him the ideal match for the sometimes zany combination of Uthoff and Dadey. A thin, dapper figure, Montague does not project the image of a man who nevertheless helped dig a drain trench for the only toilet in the Ballet Arizona facility. "My job is to take the administrative burden off Uthoff," he explains, "so he can concentrate on his work in the studio and expanding the artistic vision of the company. When I fully grasped the extent of what had to be done to establish some semblance of professional management here, I drew up a master plan for my first eighteen months. I learned a long time ago that regardless of how many fires you are putting out, you have to make time to plan ahead."

In less than his first six months on the job, Montague has put the company in the black for the first time in its existence and launched an affordable improvement project that will include installing additional bathroom facilities. He also has engaged an accounting firm with an extensive background in dealing with nonprofit organizations, supervised the updating of the company's computer and telephone systems, secured a watershed of grants and in-kind donations from previously untapped resources, and hired a proven development director.

Along with Uthoff and Ballet Arizona board president Jon Robertson, Montague was involved in the troupe's recent decision to divest itself of a once-profitable involvement in bingo. "The bingo situation was very sticky," Montague remarks, chuckling. "It had been a very popular and successful venture at one time, and no one really wanted to see it go away. However, after the three of us looked at what bingo was doing for Ballet Arizona today, it was apparent the company would be better off without bingo."

With bingo gone, the company's subscription base at comfortably above 1,000, and Uthoff, Montague, and Dadey keeping everything and everyone on the straight and narrow route to success, Ballet Arizona has nowhere to go but forward.

Lili Cockerille Livingston is Dance Magazine's correspondent. This spring University of Oklahoma Press will publish her American Indian Ballerinas.