The pride of Lyons: Lyons National Opera Ballet brings its marriage of old and new on tour to the U.S. this fall.

Rising above the terra-cotta rooftops of the French city of Lyons is an enormous steel-and-glass arched structure lit up in red. Neither an airport nor a factory, this is, instead, the opera house, which reopened in 1993 with a modern edifice vaulting out of the theater's original 1831 facade.

Nothing exemplifies the spirit of Lyons National Opera Ballet better than this building. In a country where tradition reigns supreme and a law was passed which attempted to eliminate the use of non-French words such as le walkman and le parking, this architectural combination of history and development demonstrates that preserving tradition and encouraging innovation are not mutually exclusive.

The rehearsal studios for the dance company are at the very top of the windowed dome, in an enormous, airy studio. Although its name suggests otherwise, Lyons National Opera Ballet does not dance with the opera. Nor does it perform as a traditional ballet company. Like the opera house, the company explores the tension between old and new--the repertory is experimental, but the dancers are classically trained.

The company defines itself by a diverse repertory and, according to artistic director Yorgos Loukos, its stylistic range relies upon the abilities of dancers trained in the classical tradition. Through constant work with contemporary choreographers, the dancers acquire modern technique in addition to their classical background. "In acquiring contemporary technique as a secondary technique," says Loukos, "the dancers also develop versatility and the capacity to adapt easily to the different styles of modern choreographers."

"It's really quite rare to find a company of dancers who are so open in spirit," says French choreographer Herve Robbe, who recently created Miss K for the Lyons troupe. "For a big company, it's quite unique because they are not specialized in one style. The company has a group of dancers who are not only capable of projecting themselves in different styles but are also just as ready to try."

Onstage, the LNOB dancers change styles the way chameleons change colors. Just when they seem to fit the label of modern expressionists, they sail through a hybrid work with the virtuosity and grace of ballet dancers. As a result, the company is difficult to pigeonhole--it can't be called Maguy Marin's company or Bill T. Jones's company, despite the bodies of work these two former resident choreographers have contributed to the repertory.

"We've found a sort of identity in what I would call the contemporary repertoire," says Loukos. "By saying contemporary I just mean people who are working in our time. I don't really care about more specific definitions . . . I like it all when it's good, from the theatrical productions like the ones that Maguy Marin does, from minimalistic like Lucinda Childs does, to whatever Bill T. Jones's work is considered."

Eschewing the traditional artistic director-choreographer role, Loukos acts instead as curator, culling the best from the more than 200 performances he attends each year in France and abroad. (He is also director of the Cannes Dance Festival.) "This is the only company that has established such a reputation without having a choreographer at its head," says Loukos. "Instead we have many--Maguy [Marin] and Bill T. Jones, and also Mats Ek, [Jiri] Kylian, and [William] Forsythe. They all helped me to have a good repertory, which helped me to find good dancers."

In addition to building a solid repertory with the work of recognized talents, Loukos gives opportunities to young choreographers. "I try to commission new works at least once or twice a year from new choreographers," says Loukos. "Most of them have never worked with a major company, and they have for the first time the opportunity to work with thirty dancers, have a live orchestra, big stage, and sets. Then we see if they can manage to do something with it or not."

Much of the company's commercial success has resulted from commissions that also blur the distinction between history and progress--evening-length reinterpretations of ballet classics. The company was first thrust into the spotlight in 1989 with Maguy Marin's unusual Cendrillon, in which all of the characters were dolls. This was followed by Angelin Preljocaj's Romeo and Juliet, which retained the basic story line, but replaced Verona with a bleak totalitarian police state, and by Marin's retelling of Coppelia, set in a modern suburban wasteland. Far from creating parodies of the classics, each deconstructed the original to make a new and revitalized ballet, which retains the spirit of its predecessor. In addition to these full-length works, Loukos groups shorter commissions and existing pieces to form repertory evenings with specific themes--such as an all-Mozart evening, an all-French evening, or even an all-American evening.

"I am very much into the American way of thinking and I know how things go over there," says Loukos. "I like very much this exchange between these two big dance producers which are the United States and France." Loukos has cultivated this exchange by engaging American choreographers, such as Susan Marshall, Ralph Lemon, Stephen Petronio, and Karole Armitage, in addition to Jones and Childs. The company also performed for the first time at the American Dance Festival and at Jacob's Pillow last summer. "We tour more than any other company in Europe," Loukos says proudly, "and I think that we are the only European company that has been in the States ten times in the last ten years."

For American choreographers, working for LNOB is an opportunity to focus on the art, and not the business, of dance. "When I am working here in the United States," explains Marshall, "by and large I am working with my own company. I am raising the money for it, I am responsible for it. I am responsible for everyone's pay. I'm always the artistic director as well as the choreographer. What was quite a relief for me in Lyons was simply to be the choreographer and nothing else."

In a stateside tour this fall, the company brings its characteristic melange of American and European contemporary dance with U.S. premieres by both of LNOB's former resident choreographers: Jones's Green and Blue and Marin's Groosland. To these ballets the company adds, in Berkeley and Escondido, California, Kylian's Stamping Ground; in Los Angeles, Marshall's Central Figure; and in Minneapolis, Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato's Jardi Tancat and Marshall's Central Figure.

The premieres illuminate different trends in choreography in France and in the U.S. While Jones concerns himself with movement rather than theatricality, Marin's 1989 Groosland, exemplifies the expressionism of la jeune danse francaise, a generation of French choreographers who started working in the late 1970s. "To speak very generally, I would say American choreographers tend to be more interested in movement invention and exploring the range of movement itself within a given work," explains Marshall. "Often in French dance what you get is a combination of theatrical presentation with a balletic vocabulary."

Jones created Green and Blue with the musical score in hand, and his approach is apparent in the movement. Dancers enter the stage in sync with transitions in the music and lift their legs into retire as the music ascends. "I have tried to resist my usual way into music which is through my feelings," explained Jones just before setting the work on the company in March. "I am trying to approach it almost like a very formal exercise, knowing that the music, which is so full of feeling, will inform the choices I make." Giant green and blue mobiles hang on either side of the stage. There is no artifice; the work is pure dance, accompanied by the beautiful sets, lighting, and music.

Despite sophisticated choreography which embraces the buoyancy and joy of the Bach Brandenburg Concertos, the impact of the movement in Groosland is overshadowed by the costumes, which fatten the dancers to corpulence with foam padding. Starting out dressed in a bright blue reminiscent of French laborers, and ending only in their nude-colored padding, the jovial characters are surprising yet endearing. Marin claims that the idea for the padded costumes, and hence the piece, came to her "from listening to the music," and as unfamiliar as such a rotund crowd looks bounding about the stage, when the group nude section begins with ten bare padded rumps swaying to Bach, it does seem oddly fitting.

All five works on the tour infuse balletic virtuosity with the expression of contemporary and ethnic dance. Kylian's Stamping Ground melds the principles of aboriginal dance with those of classical ballet. Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato, who was coincidentally a dancer in the premiere of Stamping Ground in 1982 at Netherlands Dance Theater, offers a dramatic portrait of a Spanish community in Jardi Tancat, set to Catalonian folk songs. Says Marshall, "In Central Figure, I was trying to work more with a classical dance vocabulary. But it's certainly not limited to a ballet vocabulary." In Marshall's work, eleven dancers glide gracefully through the Philip Glass Fifth String Quartet, while another, representing the late Arthur Armijo, a dancer from Marshall's company, remains separate.

In all of these works, the company's classical training emerges in snatches--a leg luxuriously extends skyward or a toe curls into an arc--and yet none of them are entirely classical. Once again, a success built on subverting, yet respecting, tradition.