Ballet tries to leap onto stage in time for 'Nutcracker'.

LIKE the ticking of the grandfather clock in Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite, the passing seconds portend a wild ride for the nascent Los Angeles Ballet.

The first and foremost challenge for the nonprofit troupe, which closed auditions last month and will announce its roster in the next few weeks, is finding a home.

The ballet's directors, Colleen Neary and her husband, Thordal Christensen, are well-regarded veterans in the dance world. Christensen is former artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet and Neary is a current repetiteur for the George Balanchine Trust. But the troupe, which is affiliated with the Westside School of Ballet in Santa Monica, has yet to announce performance dates or venues. A lucrative holiday performance schedule is seen as crucial to most troupes' survival, so the situation is urgent.

The Los Angeles Music Center, the site of performances by the previous incarnation of the Los Angeles Ballet, is not presently in the market for a resident ballet troupe.

"Our board made a commitment to dance presentations by nationally recognized companies," said Renae Williams, director of dance presentations for the Los Angeles Music Center. "Some of the assumptions of a resident company like the Joffrey make things like timing and space and theater availability a challenge."

The lack of a performance site to call its own could present a major financial hurdle for the L.A. Ballet.

"If holiday performances are to be done at any sizable venue, of about 2,000 seats, then they'll want to announce it by Labor Day," Williams said. "The venue is very much about perception, it adds to prestige. And to be a really strong local company, they will still have to perform throughout L.A. County, even with a residence. That's expensive."

Los Angeles Ballet board members said multiple venues are being contracted for the inaugural season, part of a plan to ensure a wide audience base.

"We are not going to be associated with a single theater; that is the recipe for success in a large metropolitan area," said board member Jennifer Bellah Maguire, a Los Angeles attorney. "We need that broad-based support in audience."

'Nutcracker' crunch

Conventional ballet company wisdom dictates that holiday performances, typically of the crowd-pleasing "Nutcracker," should account for the bulk of a company's ticket sales for the year, and can make or break a season.

"The Nutcracker income should be at least 50 percent of your yearly income, those holiday performances are extremely important for a ballet company," said John Clifford, who is now running the for-profit Los Angeles Ballet and Dance Theater, which recently staged a $3.5-million dance production of "Casablanca" in China, backed by Warner Bros. "If you are a traditional non-profit company, your major income for the whole year comes from the Nutcracker. That's the big production."

Opinions vary on how lavishly staged a "Nutcracker" production will have to be in order to draw audiences, but most area ballet aficionados agreed that to be regarded as a serious company, the troupe's performances will have to be held in a major venue. That's a significant expense, since most of large theaters operate under union contracts for dancers and stagehands. The spectacular sets, props and costumes typically used in the "Nutcracker" aren't cheap, either.

"Your income is seasonal, so you can't tell your backers that they will be paid back in a year--it will take several rounds of big performances to get any money," Clifford said.

Clifford and Neary know each other--both are New York City Ballet alums--but the once-friendly dancers haven't spoken since Neary incorporated her non-profit under the Los Angeles Ballet name, which Clifford had been trying to secure for years.

"We are coming from an absolute cold start," Bellah Maguire said. "The city has seen a few bad experiences, but if the opera can thrive here so can Los Angeles."

The troupe could function if it is forced into traveling to a series of regional venues--Long Beach's Terrace Theater, Pasadena's Ambassador Auditorium and the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium would be possible sites--but it wouldn't be easy and belts would have to be tight.

The company appears to have enough donor backing to get off the ground. Among the board members is Bari Milken, daughter of Milken Institute founder Michael, but money may not be enough.

"It's about surviving; you have to go beyond the rich," said Robyn Gardenhire, artistic director of the private City Ballet of Los Angeles. "It's not just about having money, it's about cultural rooting. You have to have a long-term audience base here to make it work."

Neary and Christensen declined interview requests for this article, but Christensen said in an interview last year that the company had a projected budget of about $1 million and had planned on a company of approximately 20 dancers. The Los Angeles Ballet Web site breaks down patronage into categories ranging from $500 to $50,000 for individual sponsors and $5,000 to $50,000-plus for corporate sponsors.

"L.A. Ballet has to position itself carefully," said Michael Alexander, vice chair of the California Arts Commission and artistic and executive director of L.A.-based Grand Performances. "They need a great group sales person to move numbers of tickets, and need a good marketing campaign so the company looks successful from the get go. They have to have a lot of things lined up to be successful in the public's eyes, and it all takes money. L.A. is not patient."

In true Hollywood style, ballet in Los Angeles has been marked by lofty aspirations rather than enduring success over the past few decades.

The first Los Angeles Ballet, directed by John Clifford, ran from 1974 to 1985 but folded due to funding problems and a lack of a permanent home theater. The selection of the now Chicago-based Joffrey Ballet as the resident ballet company of the Music Center in 1983 was the death knell of the original company. But even the Joffrey had a tough time locally, departing the city in 1992.

Clifford tried to restart his Los Angeles Ballet venture in the mid-1990s, with 46 union dancers and a holiday season "Nutcracker," for which he budgeted $2 million, to be funded in part by a $975,000 Dayton-Hudson Corp. grant, but those efforts came up short.