James Kudelka: out of the depths.

If the old myth is true - that real genius can spring only from a tortured soul - then James Kudelka is the quintessential example: the internationally acclaimed Canadian choreographer has been grappling with demons all his life. In artistic terms, this inner turmoil has translated into choreography that is as sophisticated as it is provocative, distinguishing Kudelka as the next great voice of ballet vocabulary. "My entire creative career has been autobiographical," he says, "and the choreography has been most successful when it has come from a deep place."

Kudelka was one of the most precocious students ever to pass through the National Ballet School in Toronto, where he arrived at age ten. Wearing big owl glasses and toting a large briefcase, Kudelka was the school's resident intellectual, always questioning, always probing. By the time he was fourteen, he was producing choreography that attracted attention.

After he joined National Ballet of Canada at sixteen, Kudelka's clean technique and enormous dramatic ability propelled him quickly through the ranks to first soloist. He also choreographed a dozen ballets, both for workshops and the regular repertoire, and he was named resident choreographer in 1980. Nonetheless, in 1981, Kudelka acrimoniously parted ways with the National and bolted for Montreal's Les Grands Ballets Canadiens.

Close associates believe that Kudelka's years at the National Ballet School left him not only damaged emotionally but ill prepared for the real world. Says David Earle, artistic director of Toronto Dance Theatre: "James never recovered from the pressures of the school, where he had been ridiculed by his peers but prized for his intelligence by the staff and brought up to believe he was special. Even today it's hard for James to become informal, even for a moment - like royalty stranded outside the palace."

His loyal circle of friends maintains that once Kudelka feels he can let down his guard, his wicked sense of humor comes out in full force. Nonetheless, Kudelka's dark moods and seeming aloofness are legendary. Earle adds: "When I was cochoreographing Scheherazade with James at Les Grands, I was his houseguest. One day the secretary at the company phoned to thank me for making James laugh at breakfast, because he had arrived in a good frame of mind." It is important to note, however, that Kudelka never carries his moods into the studio; he is regarded as one of the most solicitous of choreographers, with an infinite respect for dancers.

Robert Sirman, the National Ballet School's administrative director, points out that many of Kudelka's adult works have dealt with humiliation and loneliness. "There is a mystery as to why James was put into the company early, before he was officially graduated from the school. The party line is that he was ready to take on the demands; perhaps he asked one challenging question too many, and they couldn't deal with him anymore. To a young, sensitive kid, this could have seemed like rejection rather than something positive."

In 1984 Kudelka set unfinished business on Toronto's Dancemakers, which was clearly a working-through of his National Ballet School years. The dancers wore kilt uniforms similar to those worn at the school, and the piece was a disturbing work that dealt with repression of natural instincts. Earlier, he had expressed his frustration with the National in Playhouse (1979), in which a master dominated puppetlike dancers. "We hated doing the ballet," Victoria Bertram says of Playhouse, "because it was about us, and our helplessness at the manipulation of a director - a life without choice."

Bertram, principal character dancer with the National and a longtime friend of Kudelka, tells this revealing story. "When my son was born, in 1975, the company sent me a card. Everyone else had written |Best Wishes' or the like; James signed his name and underneath wrote the telephone number of his psychiatrist." Therapy, in fact, has been very much an ongoing part of Kudelka's life - not surprising in a man whose personality is more dark than light, who must balance his enormous desire for recognition against a mass of seething insecurities. As Bertram says, "For James, the glass is always half-empty."

Although Kudelka was given opportunities to choreograph at the National, he chafed under the artistic directorship of Alexander Grant, who was enamored of the Ashton repertoire. The outspoken young man made it clear that Grant, whose career had been advanced by the original works choreographers set on him, should provide similar opportunities for his own dancers. At the same time, Kudelka was under the gun to produce successes; at the National there was no room for the noble failure. He was suffocating in a company and city that for him represented the worst of the status quo. One attempted cure for his malaise was to sneak off to Toronto Dance Theatre to take lessons in Graham technique from Earle.

In retrospect, two key events can be seen as turning points in Kudelka's life. In 1979 he received a Canada Council grant to travel in Europe, which opened his eyes to the infinite possibilities of dance. The following year, he was invited to a choreographic seminar at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta. Choreographers were matched with composers and talented dancers to produce a work a day, and in this exhilarating atmosphere Kudelka became revitalized. So, when Les Grands beckoned in 1981, Kudelka jumped.

"James needed creative ground," says Daniel Jackson, a former co-artistic director of Les Grands who now heads Montreal Danse, "and we actively encouraged choreography. We not only gave him carte blanche to experiment, we made him a principal dancer so he would be challenged both ways. From the start we were taken aback by James's total originality of movement and his ability to carry dancers to places where they had never been before choreographically. My head still floats with the images of his invention."

In 1983 Kudelka created his first acknowledged masterpiece, In Paradisum, an off-pointe work that was inspired by his mother's death and set to an original score by Michael J. Baker. Kudelka had been born one of six children on a farm outside of Toronto, where his father was the estate agent. Throughout his years of estrangement from his family, when Kudelka was a resident National Ballet School student, and during his unhappy years with the National, his mother had been his strongest supporter and ally. Her loss was devastating to Kudelka; the lonely outsider became even more isolated. In Paradisum is a haunting, searing coming to terms with that loss, magnificently crafted and without a hint of false sentiment.

Although In Paradisum came from great sorrow, ironically it was the making of Kudelka's North American career. In rapid order commissions or requests for works came from Canada's top ballet and contemporary companies as well as from individual dancers. Major American companies such as Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and Houston Ballet have Kudelka works in their repertoires, and future commissions include pieces for Martha Graham Dance Company and American Ballet Theatre. Kudelka declined to participate in New York City Ballet's 1992 Diamond Project because he was already into choreographic overload and did not agree with the aesthetics of the project.

Part of Kudelka's fascination as a choreographer is his ability to create works for both ballet and contemporary companies with equal aplomb. A key to his choreographic gift is that, inspired by the dancers he finds in a given situation, he makes his pieces company specific - yet these works can be performed by others later on. Repeated viewings of his dances increase their richness. Even more astonishing, each work looks completely different, making it virtually impossible to recognize a "Kudelka style." His visual sense is also extraordinary. Says Earle: "Freezeframe any part of his dances, and you'll have a gorgeous three-dimensional sculpture."

What is in life, is in art; Kudelka, who came from a family of achievers and trained in a school of achievers, has set a career goal of continually proving himself. If there is any Kudelka signature, it is the enormously challenging movement patterns he creates. "I admit my choreography is difficult," he says. "I try to add an extra step into every phrase because I want to make the dancers think ahead. This stops them from smiling vacantly at the audience. The intensity in my works comes from everything being a little too hard."

Ballet mistress Anita Paciotti of San Francisco Ballet regards Kudelka as having the potential to be one of the world's great choreographers. "It was clear from the first day that he had been influenced by modern dance, because he challenges the classical notion of dance as balanced and vertical. James isn't interested in watching something comfortable. His movement is fast and round, and he loves using off-balance, with dancers sharing weight, which is precarious in pointe shoes. It's the most dangerous choreography I've ever worked with - but also the most exciting."

Kudelka stresses that his works are constructed on an emotional base. "I try not to tell the dancers what the piece is about. I feel that the information is being given during the whole creative process. I don't give counts but work with imagery. I make my dances in such a way that the dancers are forced to make an emotional connection." Les Grands' Sylvain Lafortune remembers the revelation that In Paradisum was for him: "My aim had been to concentrate on doing the steps well, so I was shocked when people were moved. I realized that James had such control of the choreography that he could produce emotion without the dancers knowing it. It changed my perception of dance, and from then on I never faked emotion; if the choreographer is good, the emotion will read in the steps."

The National's Karen Kain is another admirer. The dancer has appeared in Pastorale (1990), Musings (1991), and The Miraculous Mandarin (1993), original Kudelka works set on the company, and will also be the central figure in his new piece for the National, The Actress, which premieres in February. For Kain, Kudelka's trademark is his extraordinarily inventive partnering. "He finds beauty in the tension and struggle, which never gets any easier in performance," she says. "In Musings, for example, Serge Lavoie had me balanced on pointe on his right hand. James had him grab my right leg and throw me up in midair so that my leg could rotate ninety degrees and pass over his head. Usually for this kind of move, I'd have a whole run at it, but James wanted it done in one step. Then in the next musical phrase, he wanted the same movement in reverse. We struggled and struggled, thinking surely he'd change it, but he waited until we mastered it."

At age thirty-eight, and with fifty works behind him, Kudelka has been able to lay some of his personal demons to rest. In 1992 he was appointed artist in residence with the National. The previous year he had accepted a commission to create a piece for the spring recital of the National Ballet School. The healing came about because the current administrators at both places share no negative emotional history with Kudelka; he could set aside the hurt and anger and walk through both doors once again.

Says Kudelka: "The party was over in Montreal. There was a new artistic director who wanted to do his own thing, and my history got wiped out. I had been very influential in that company, and suddenly I was put on contract work. A series of painful setbacks made me realize that Les Grands wasn't home anymore."

The National's artistic director, Reid Anderson, first got to know Kudelka well when he was setting Pastorale on the company. "That ballet was the motivating factor in my asking James to join us. I've had the good fortune to work with great choreographers, so I know great choreography when I see it. I'm enthralled by the way his steps are appliqued onto the music-not only reflecting the music but taking it beyond what the composer tells you alone. James is not just a person making steps; he's a total artist."

Anderson also values Kudelka as a colleague with whom he can communicate on his own artistic level. "James is another set of eyes, and his views are always valid, whether about the dancers and their careers, or programming ideas or company politics. He never says anything frivolous."

Says Bertram: "James has come back on his own terms. He had to go away to prove himself, now he's come home a respected senior artist.