San Diego report: another dance in paradise.

"I WANTED a supportive community where my voice could make a difference," says choreographer Grace Shinhae Jun. After earning her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, Jun left New York and found her dance mecca--San Diego, where the 29-year-old artist enjoys teaching jobs and finds performance opportunities for bkSoul, the bicoastal company she directs with Brooklyn-based Olase Freeman.

Local dance watchers use terms like "cultural maturity" and "critical mass" to describe a scene that includes three ballet companies, multiple generations of modern choreographers, and the largest world dance festival in Southern California. Credit a proactive Commission for Arts and Culture, population growth (to 2.8 million in San Diego County in 2000), and geography. "As dancers, we love space, and it's a powerful thing to stand facing the rest of the country from this corner," says Gina Angelique, whose Eveoke Dance Theatre has reached new audiences with its in-your-face, hip hop-flavored work. San Diego's place on the map also inspired Nina Martin and her fellow contact improvisers to name their performance collective (founded, like Eveoke, in 1994) Lower Left.

Angelique, a 33-year-old powerhouse, promotes "the ethic of sharing versus competing" via Eveoke's "Celebrate Dance," a free, non-adjudicated festival in bustling Balboa Park, located a short walk from downtown. In its ninth year last August, the festival featured nearly 80 troupes from southern California and drew 10,000 people. In a similar collaborative spirit, Jean Isaacs' Trolley Dances ("Trolley Dancing," DM, Oct. 2003) annually showcases some half-dozen choreographers and 50 dancers. In addition, John Malashock, who danced with Twyla Tharp for five years, is spearheading community plans for DANCE PLACE/San Diego, 25,000 square feet of shared studio, office, and ancillary space in a former Navy facility.

Another catalyst is Allyson Green, who--as interim artistic director of the alternative presenter Sushi--created a program in which established choreographers mentor emerging artists like Lux Boreal, an electrifying young company from Tijuana (less than 20 miles from downtown San Diego). Green, a former New York dancer who formed her own company in 1992, also teaches at the University of California, San Diego, which helped fuel the boom by hiring major artists like dance department chair Yolande Snaith (from London).

The San Diego Dance Alliance, an umbrella organization that represents more than 60 member companies, scoured neighborhoods to find performers for its first annual Nations of San Diego International Dance Festival in 1993. Since then, the visibility of world dance (a natural in a community where 100 languages are spoken) has climbed. The latest Nations festival in January, offered 14 companies representing a swath of cultures, including the Philippines, Argentina, Spain, and Maori.

Twelve-year-old City Ballet achieved a landmark last May with its first all-Balanchine program, but directors Steven and Elizabeth Wistrich (formerly of the Stuttgart Ballet) see a need for audience development. "Just trying to get people to come see the work is hard," Steven Wistrich says. Risk-taking presenters--like Martin Wollesen at the UCSD--should help. "We want to build an audience that trusts something they haven't experienced before," says Wollesen, whose 2004-05 "ArtPower" season includes companies from Brazil, England, China, and Australia.

Ironically San Diego's dance boom is taking place despite ever tighter funding. That doesn't surprise Malashock, who has kept his company alive since 1988. "Dance has its own timing," he says. "It happens out of need and out of the momentum of individuals and groups to do what they do."