Presenting the Presenters: Killacky and White.

WHEN THE HISTORY of American dance in the last generation of the twentieth century is ultimately written, both John R. Killacky and David Randolph White will rate considerably more than a footnote. Neither is a dancer, a choreographer, a composer, or a visual artist; and if you ask them to describe what they do or have done in a full autobiography or less, these two most articulate of individuals resist pasting a label on their achievements. Calling them mere producers sounds banal. Calling them facilitators sounds technocratic. Calling them postmodern Diaghilevs sounds facile. Calling them midwives sounds a mite clinical.

Yet, they have flourished in all those capacities and more. David White has served as executive director and producer of New York's Dance Theater Workshop since 1975. Killacky is the executive director of San Francisco's multidisciplinary Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the revolving-door post he assumed in late 1996 after eight years as performing arts curator at Minneapolis's Walker Arts Center, and stints with the Pew Charitable Trust, PepsiCo Summerfare, and the dance companies of Laura Dean and Trisha Brown.

The dancegoing public may be hazy about their attainments, but the leaders of the American dance community know a couple of prime movers when they see them, and the official recognition comes this year. White is the forty-ninth honoree of the Capezio Dance Award (the presentation ceremony was held April 17 in New York). He has also received a 2000 Dance/USA Honor, to be given at the organization's National Roundtable in San Francisco June 13. At the same time, Killacky will be feted with one of Dance/USA's two Ernie Awards, named after the late "Ernie" Horvath and intended to recognize "unsung heroes" in the world of dance.

Unsung? Within the not-for-profit arts world of San Francisco, Killacky is prone to emitting arias of encouragement and optimism about the creative spirit. One evening, he can be spotted in a silvery white Andy Warhol wig gladhanding sponsors during YBC's annual benefit Artists' Ball (the latest, one hastens to add, an homage to the 1960s). The next afternoon, you will find him chatting in his second-floor office. The window faces the front of Mario Botta's stunning San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; with YBC, it is now the local epicenter for the possibilities of artistic endeavor in the new century.

Killacky is equally thrilled about the spacious open garden adjoining the center (where the SF Opera, Symphony, and local dance troupes give free noontime performances), and the Sony Metreon entertainment complex down the block. And he brims with enthusiasm about both the Mexican Museum and the Jewish Museum, which, in a few years, will have relocated across the street.

He admits that his role has changed dramatically since he left the Walker. There, he produced 100 events a year, 10 percent of them commissions, and spent an annual $1 million of an $11 million budget. "Here, with a $6 million annual budget, I'm running the whole organization, the operational, marketing, and financial sides of it," Killacky notes. "Before I came, I was reminded I was a curator no longer. I'm here to support my curators, to make them think in broader terms, to add my expertise to the mix."

That expertise has been responsible for some of YBC's biggest coups. Two years ago, when Killacky heard that the Liat Dror Nir Ben Gal Company, a mesmerizing Israeli dance theater company, would be as close as Montreal, he arranged for the troupe's local debut, concurrent with an exhibition of young Israeli visual artists; Anta Oumri would prove a subversively triumphant gift from the land of vinegar and honey. He is currently considering a major project that will bring artists (easel and video), musicians, and dancers from Portugal to San Francisco.

He has pondered, too, his new role. "At the Walker, my mission was to bring international art to local audiences and I realized that, to do that, you had to be pretty connected locally. Here, it's almost the reverse. The mission of the center is to support local artists, and if I'm to do that, I must connect internationally. And, remember," Killacky adds, "I'm interested in process-centered, experimental projects."

To that end, he has godfathered a number of projects that link Bay Area artists with performers around the globe. Recently, Killacky sent choreographer Alonzo King to Africa for a meeting with musicians from the Ituri rain forest. They clicked. "So, Alonzo will go back and spend a few weeks with them, and perhaps, it will generate a collaboration, which will be shown here next year."

This project epitomizes Killacky's innovative artists' residency policy at YBC, given a major boost in 1998 by a $2 million grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Trust (shared with San Francisco Performances). The center has already housed relationships with Stephen Petronio, Ralph Lemon, butoh artist Akira Kasai, Robert Moses, and OnSite Dance Company. Public performance is not necessarily the goal of these relationships, though some dances developed during a residency eventually do reach the production stage. (The second part of Lemon's Geography project is slated for the fall.)

"I'm interested in the process," says Killacky. "Here's a chance for choreographers to do something they wouldn't ordinarily get a chance to do; and if they only finish five minutes of it, that's OK. This should be a laboratory."

And how does Killacky know superior work when he sees it? "I will feel it viscerally--it will perplex and unsettle me--before I can come to terms with it intellectually. It is not my job to define greatness."

In that, David White concurs. "I'm not in the business of identifying masterpieces," he declares. "But superior artists have a way of stepping out, establishing premises, and realizing them. It will all be there. I look for the quality of the ideas and I look for revelations of personality, an individual charisma. Dance, in my mind, is a community, and some choreographers step out of that community more than others."

White has presented more than 800 choreographers, theater artists, and musicians since he took over DTW in 1975. The annual budget has grown from $80,000 to $3 million in the last fiscal year. In some ways, White couldn't be more sanguine. A $2.5-million Doris Duke grant will seed an endowment and permit the construction of a new building with extensive media facilities; and because DTW's Bessie Schonberg Theater is located in once shabby and now trendy Chelsea, the sale of the air rights should bring in a substantial income.

Even more important, White sees no shortage of interesting talent. He cites Everett Dance Theater and Ellis Wood as recent discoveries. "I turn away 100 people a year from the Fresh Tracks auditions. Can I spot the next Mark Morris out there? No, but Mark was an anomaly, anyway."

Over the years, White has seen his role evolve. In 1985, he launched DTW's National Performance Network, a touring, residency, and commissioning program for alternative, university, and community presenters that now involves fifty-eight organizations in thirty-nine cities. More than 100 residencies have been subsidized. White stepped down as executive director in 1998, but only after an ongoing administrative structure was in place.

At about the same time he devised the NPN, White developed the Suitcase Fund, both to send Americans abroad for research and to shape some kind of American cultural policy. The aim was to combat the aesthetic isolation in which even sophisticated New Yorkers find themselves. "They're as isolated as anybody," he insists.

These days, White finds himself curating much less than formerly; a trained staff has taken up some of his erstwhile duties. DTW's role in the future, he feels, will more crucial than ever.

"Institutionalization of dance companies simply isn't the paradigm any longer, and the self-sufficient individual isn't a terribly useful model. The practice in the 1970s, the marketplace concept of selling dance off the shelf, is just not valid today. But we can provide a lifeline to artists by creating opportunities, by setting up a system in which other artists can create. We must commit to artists, to invest in them. Our job is not to present one concert that comes and goes over a single weekend, but to support a choreographer over a long period."

The policy has reaped rewards that have altered the complexion of dance in this country. Among the projects developed at DTW were Morris's Gloria (still in the repertoire after more than a decade) and Donald Byrd's Minstrel Show. Among the important careers nurtured by White were Bebe Miller's, Susan Marshall's, Senta Driver's, and Doug Elkins's. He recalls with much pleasure how Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker, then a student at Columbia, introduced her now legendary Fase at an open audition, and he remembers when virtually the only composers of choice were Steve Reich or Philip Glass. And unlike Killacky, he believes that public performance is part of the laboratory process.

If White has never sought public recognition as the Sol Hurok of the avant-garde, it has been intentional. "I like to think that John and myself are animators. We have never drawn attention to our flagrant development. We chose to be less visible behind the stream of activity. We have never been in an impresario mode. I can't think about a legacy. It has been a case of supplying the basic necessities."

Allan Ulrich is the dance critic of the San Francisco Examiner.