DANCE OVER DIALOGUE MOVEMENT DOES THE TALKING IN ALTMAN'S `THE COMPANY'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

`The Company'' was designed to be like no dance movie you've ever seen.

It is, you see, about dancing.

The brainchild of actress Neve Campbell, who danced with the National Ballet School of Canada before injuries forced her - gosh darn it - to become a noted television (``Party of Five'') and movie (``Scream'') star, the film focuses on some weeks in the life of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet troupe. Directed by the oft-offbeat Robert Altman, whose movies range from ``M*A*S*H'' and ``Nashville'' to ``Short Cuts'' and ``Gosford Park,'' the film eschews the usual ``Turning Point'' histrionics and ``Red Shoes'' fantasizing for an unemphatic, observational study of what makes dancers and one of their organizations tick.

`` 'The Company' has no narrative, really,'' Altman explains. ``It's a day in the life. Why does everything have to be the same, follow a pattern? If I put a conventional story into 'The Company,' you've seen that film six times already and would know what's going to happen. This is looking in through a window.''

``This is so different because there's never been a movie made about dance itself,'' says Campbell, 30, who produced as well as appeared in ``The Company.'' ``There have been dance movies made where it's a fairy tale story, or it's a typical narrative. You know, it's about the dancer who's in the chorus who gets her chance to come forward. I mean, 'The Turning Point' is lovely because there are some great characters. But you're not just dealing with what dance is about.''

No '42nd Street'

The film grew out of the ashes of a big studio project that Campbell just couldn't swing with. Subsequently, she worked for years with screenwriter Barbara Turner - who, it turned out, had worked with Altman when he was making television shows and she was an actress in the 1960s - to lay the foundation for her ideal ballet film.

``I was first called to rewrite a script that Warner Bros. had, apparently, written for Neve because she wanted to do a dance film,'' says Turner, who scripted Ed Harris' ``Pollock'' and ``Georgia,'' which starred her daughter, Jennifer Jason Leigh. ``She wasn't happy with it, and about two weeks later she just abandoned the whole thing because it was sort of '42nd Street,' you know, 'Go out there and become a big star.' About six months later, she called and said that she wanted to make a film about a company. She didn't want to star in it; she had never really seen a film that told the story of a company.

``Then we settled on the Joffrey. I went back and forth to hang out with them with a tape recorder for about a year, and we were on the phone a lot. Neve and I would meet every once in a while, I'd show her all the transcriptions, and she'd pick out what she liked. It was a very organic process, and when I was finished, I realized that I'd basically accomplished writing a script that had absolutely no plot. And I thought, 'Who else would look at this but Bob?' ''

Known for repeatedly breaking the ``rules'' of commercial cinema, Altman is often credited with perfecting the big ensemble film and the concept of overlapping dialogue in which multiple characters cut in on one another's lines.

The barre scene

``Company'' marks several new steps down such roads. Besides Campbell, Malcolm McDowell as a character based closely on Joffrey artistic director Gerald Arpino and James Franco as a nondancer who has a romance with Campbell's ballerina, most of the characters in the film are played by real Joffrey dancers. Choreographers Lar Lubovitch and Robert Desrosiers appear as themselves. And while nobody is exactly mute, McDowell is the only player who speaks extensive amounts of dialogue. Everyone else expresses themselves primarily through movement.

``Working with the dancers was great,'' says Altman, who has a reputation for being well-loved by actors. ``It's ruined me, it really has. I pick up scripts now and think, 'God, shut up, why do we have to hear all this?'

``I don't have anything to say,'' he says, nevertheless, of his latest work. ``I don't have anything I want these characters to transmit. I just want them to be believable, real people. The little love story is a pas de deux between Neve and Franco. We cut all the dialogue out of that; the only reason they spoke is because if they didn't speak, you'd think they were mad. But it's just boy meets girl, they go to bed, they cook breakfast, they fall in love, each of 'em get minor injuries, and at the end they kiss and live happily ever after. But I don't know if it's ever after. In fact, I guarantee you that five days after that show closed, he couldn't handle the discipline that she had to go by and he probably left her.''

On her toes

For her part, Campbell found her Joffrey co-stars just as great as Altman did. And infinitely forgiving as well.

``I mean, the only way that I wanted to do this film was if I could dance myself and not have a double, be up to par with the Joffrey,'' Campbell says. ``There were certainly days during training when I thought I was insane. But I worked my butt off. And they were so supportive. I think they were happy to have this kind of film being made about them. They were very patient with me - and helpful.''

Part of that, no doubt, grew out of the dancers' appreciation for Campbell's completely non-Hollywood approach to the assignment.

``I don't know of any movie star who would take a role like this,'' Altman says. ``Neve didn't have a dressing room. She didn't have a call differently than anybody else. She sat on the floor with the dancers. I never talked to her after the dailies or anything, and she'd never come to me before shooting. I said, 'You're one of those dancers. That's what you want to be, you're a member of a company. Go do it.' And you wouldn't pick out that she's an actor. I think she said 15 lines in the whole picture. And they were inarticulate.''

Pretending to be a classical dancer after nine years away from that game, though, required some acting skill. And a lot of painful preparation.

``Not until I found out that the project was a go was I able to let everything else go and concentrate on dancing,'' the busy actress reports. ``I trained 8 1/2 hours a day for 4 1/2 months, then another 8 1/2 hours a day with the Joffrey for a month and a half to learn the ballets we did.

Major pain

``I broke my rib three days before I went to Chicago,'' Campbell adds, ruefully. ``I was in constant pain, because you can't breathe, you can't sleep, I was dancing eight hours a day and then not sleeping and just taking pain pills. I went to 12 doctors - every different kind of crackpot doctor in Chicago - and every one pretty much said, 'Wow, you're in a jam. There's nothing you can do for a rib. All you're supposed to do is rest.'

``It was grueling. But it was also phenomenal. When you do something like dance for so long and then suddenly have it gone, it leaves a huge hole in your life. So to find that again - even to just go lie on the studio floor at 8 a.m. and start warming your body up - was just like finding your spirit again.''

What Campbell learned from her ballet years has, besides being creatively fulfilling, been invaluable to the acting career that followed.

``Dance is incredibly disciplined and challenging,'' she says. ``So when challenges arise, it's helped me handle them and not feel daunted. Also, I learned to take care of myself very well. And it's humbling to be a dancer. You don't have any control over your career. You're constantly looking for someone to guide you and correct you and point out your problems and mistakes. So you learn to deal with criticism very well.''

As for Altman, who has not always dealt well with the criticism his rebellious and experimental filmmaking ways have engendered over the decades, trying something new - like a film that's about dance - helps keep one of the longest and most interesting careers in movies vital, too.

``I'm certainly changing,'' the 78-year-old director says. ``If something comes my way and I think I've really done it before, I'm afraid I'll be late for work. So I have to keep myself terrified all the time. I have to not see any way that we can accomplish this, then we go into the fog and it gets accomplished.''

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) POINTE MADE

Neve Campbell takes a huge leap of faith with `The Company'

(2) Ballet troupe artistic director Alberto Antonelli (Malcolm McDowell) instructs dancer Ry (Neve Campbell) in ``The Company.''

(3) Robert Altman,

director

(4) Neve Campbell,

actress