‘Billy the Kid’: Still the Dancing Outlaw at 50 : Four upcoming Southland productions of Eugene Loring’s ballet reveal a wide range of interpretive options

The historical Billy the Kid was shot to death more than a century ago, but lives on as a potent American archetype: the outcast turned vengeful sociopath. Even Eugene Loring’s once-controversial ballet about Billy is now a 50-year-old classic and, in a time of growing conservatism, paradoxically more popular than ever.

Indeed, Southern California dance audiences can see four different interpretations of “Billy the Kid” over the next seven weeks:

-- The new Joffrey Ballet production at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. (The company will also dance the ballet during its season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, May 9-June 4.) -- The familiar Oakland Ballet version (which may represent the choreographer’s last thoughts about the work) at Pepperdine University in Malibu, April 29 and 30.

-- The first black “Billy” by Dance Theater of Harlem at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, May 26-June 4.

-- A stellar Danish Billy, who joins a student cast at UC Irvine May 31-June 3. (Loring founded the campus Dance Department in 1965 and remained associated with it until his death in 1982.)

What accounts for the undying fascination with the ballet? Representatives of the four companies give wide-ranging answers.

For Gerald Arpino, artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet, “Billy the Kid” “represents a turning point approach to the ballet and to dance itself.”

For Ronn Guidi, artistic director of Oakland Ballet, “Billy” is “a wonderful piece of theater.”

For Cassandra Phifer, ballet mistress of Dance Theater of Harlem, “Billy” is “a classic work . . . (that) gives us a better idea of where we were, where we are today and where we want to be.”

For Donald Bradburn, artistic director of concerts at UC Irvine, “Billy” evokes primal emotions: “It is a microcosm of the never-ending cycle of life and the progress of civilization, the progression towards something, whether it’s the frontier or the future.”

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Arpino says the ballet has “electrified audiences” from its first production in 1938 at the Civic Theatre of the Chicago Opera House. (The ballet was originally danced by Ballet Caravan--a precursor of New York City Ballet. More recently, it has become identified with American Ballet Theatre.)

“Audiences had been used just to the Ballets Russes’ ‘Swan Lake,’ ‘Les Sylphides’ and ‘Scheherazade,’ ” Arpino explains. “For an American choreographer such as Loring to come along broke all sorts of ritual barriers. It was more than avant-garde. Loring was an innovator.”

His innovation involved crafting a new movement vocabulary that combined ballet and modern dance movements plus gestures such as “mounting a horse, lassoing of cattle, pushing through the expanse in the opening--which is so magnificent and uplifting when you watch it,” Arpino says.

“It gives you a sense of the drive and the bravery of our early settlers and what they had to contend with in developing our land.”

Yet, Arpino also describes the story of the ballet as “terrifying.”

“We do make a hero of this young killer and his defiance. . . . He has no redeeming qualities--except, in the end, he does have to pay for his havoc.

“All that has to be thought about, particularly by the young people of today.”

Guidi of the Oakland Ballet agrees with the dark implications.

“It has always been a disturbing work, it always had mixed receptions from both audiences and the press,” Guidi says.

“Eugene made Billy a kind of anti-hero. But, remember, Billy was a cold-blooded killer. There is no justification for (murdering) the people he killed, even though they say he always killed in self-defense.

“You get a sense that this guy--the life of this guy--is a real tragedy . . . Yet the work is a wonderful piece of theater.”

Loring set four works on Oakland Ballet, including “Billy,” during his association with the company from 1976-1982. Guidi remembers his demand that dancers execute the movements without the normal ballet turn-out.

“Even the double tours are in fourth position parallel, not turned-out,” Guidi says. “The only place you see turnout is in the role of the Mother-Sweetheart. All the other movement is parallel in the legs. This (technical demand) is very hard for ballet dancers who dance classically every day of their lives.”

Bradburn of UC Irvine remembers another Loring obsession. “While Mr. Loring would always insist upon the stylistic details being there, he wanted a dramatic motivation behind the movement,” he recalls. “He felt that if you got your emotional energy going, that would allow you to do things technically.

“That was the reason he could get things out of dancers beyond their technical level at some points, because he could stimulate that other type of energy that would help them.”

Bradburn, who began his dance studies at Loring’s School of American Dance in Hollywood, later assisted Loring at UCI. (The Irvine program also will include Loring’s last ballet, “Time Unto Time,” choreographed in 1982.)

Phifer of Dance Theatre of Harlem regards “Billy” as “a comparison piece . . . a piece that a lot of companies can do, and each company will be recognized for what it brings to it,” she explains. “One of our strong suits is that we have a good sense of dramatic ballet.”

She says, however, that the company will not try to radically reinterpret the story from a black cultural perspective, as it has done with “The Firebird” and “Giselle.”

“This is one of the things--like many things in our society--that transcends color,” she says. “The whole purpose of our Creole ‘Giselle’ was to make it a black version, trying to show you that color is not important. It’s the quality of the works that is important.

“We must get away from labeling things, ‘This is black,’ ‘This is white,’ in all aspects in life, not just in dance.”

For the dancers, the role of Billy can accommodate a range of approaches. Joral Schmalle of Oakland Ballet believes that “Billy is a victim of circumstance.”

“I did extensive research on the real-life Billy (William H. Bonney) and found that he wasn’t really vicious,” he says.

“There is only one instance that I can find in which he killed someone out of real viciousness, and that was when he was captured and put in jail and the jailer was continuously taunting him about his death. . . When Billy escaped, he shot the jailer dead.”

Says Eddie J. Shellman (Dance Theater of Harlem): “Doing Billy gives me a chance to really act. It’s not so much the physical things--a lot of double tours in the air, pirouettes and difficult character steps--but the acting, being that man, trying to figure out . . . what he was thinking, what caused him to click like that, from being a basically nice kid to going to be a cold-blooded killer.”

Jerel Hilding, who will dance Billy with the Joffrey Ballet on Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, approaches the role “in terms of acting images.”

“Each time before Billy shoots, he does a double pirouette and double tour and lands in a shooting position,” he says. “I like to think of that as a physical image, like a cowboy spinning his gun in the old Western movies. It gives his character that brashness and cockiness that is important to the role. Besides, dramatically it builds up to a technical feat culminating in the shooting.”

Hilding adds that he was surprised to be cast in the role. “First of all, I feel my career is winding down. I’m 39, the oldest man in the company--and here I am playing a kid. I’m thinking of retirement at the end of this season. . . . moving on.

“This is one of the best roles that’s been offered to me, especially it being the end of my career. So I value it even more. I value going out and doing a good part.”

Glenn Edgerton, the second-night Joffrey Ballet Billy, says: “It’s a great role, but very hard physically to be so dead on the money and very precise. Everything has a reason, there is nothing extraneous. And to be doing this technical aspect and trying to project a mood or dramatic overtones is also hard. One sometimes outweighs the other. It’s hard to keep them up on an even level.

“But I love it. I feel like I’m in a Western movie. I get a chance to be a villain instead of having to be classical.”

The Billy mystique has reached as far as Denmark, corraling Alexander Kolpin, a principal dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet. He will be heading the UCI cast.

“I was very thrilled when I was asked to do Billy,” Kolpin said. “It’s very interesting that you make a 50th anniversary of an American ballet and you have a Dane in it. I think it’s fun. That’s interesting.”

“I would not call it a dance ballet. It is a mime ballet. Mime is one of my strong points. I have my (ballet) technique because I’m a principal dancer. But I am a mimer. I use acting on stage very much. . . . This is just a different kind of mime.”

And, no, Kolpin doesn’t regard the American story as alien to him.

“Not at all,” Kolpin said. “I don’t feel far away from (Billy). I feel very close to him. I think he is a good guy. He loves his mother and his mother gets killed. It’s just a revenge. I see him very boyish and childish. I’m that way, too.”