DANCE : Applause for Osborne Sets New Work in Motion

When choreographer David Allan and Erik Bruhn, the artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, were looking for a charismatic dancer to cast in the lead of a new ballet in 1987, they didn’t have to look far. They immediately thought of Gregory Osborne, a principal in the company--and the most celebrated ballet dancer ever to have come out of Orange County.

The work, Allan recalled last week, “was called ‘Masada,’ about a mass suicide in (ancient) Israel. Erik and I were wondering how to persuade an audience that a single person could convince a thousand zealots to kill themselves. We figured it could be Greg. He could seize an emotional moment like that.”

Osborne died of cancer in January, at age 39, back in Newport Beach where he had been raised. Already, his memory is inspiring new works. “Angel of the Abyss” by Charles Maple--formerly of the American Ballet Theatre, where Osborne danced before going to Canada in 1983--was presented in Los Angeles over the weekend as part of the Dance Kaleidoscope series. And now Allan, of New York City, is dedicating his newest piece to the fallen dancer.

“I’ve created this with Greg in mind,” he said of the still untitled work-in-progress, to be danced Saturday at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa as part of the fourth annual Ballet Pacifica summer Choreographic Project. “It’s from my heart.”

Maple’s work is grandiose in terms of its scenic effects, but Allan has concentrated on fast, abstract movement. Choreographed for nine dancers (six women and three men), it is set to the six short sections that make up Peter Warlock’s “Capriol Suite.”

Allan said that he and Osborne “had talked about doing this music. He had wanted me to do something that he could take guesting with him. So when the (Ballet Pacifica project) came up, I thought: I’ll do this for Greg.”

One of the unusual elements of the piece is a recurring clapping motif, which Allan directly links to Osborne. “Greg had a vivacious personality. He could capture a moment with tons of people in the room. He would just have this outburst of personality. These claps are like: Take the moment, make the most of it, don’t just throw it away like it’s yesterday’s trash.”

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Born in Boston and raised in St. Louis, Allan, 37, was 9 when he saw his first ballet--the Royal Ballet production of Ashton’s “The Dream” with Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley.

“I turned to my parents and said, ‘When do I start dancing?’ I wanted to do the role of Puck.”

In 1977, his childhood dream came true: He danced the role with the National Ballet of Canada, in a cast that included Dowell as Oberon.

The night after he saw “The Dream” with his parents, Allan saw Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn in MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet.”’

“I was hooked,” Allan said.

He joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1974, when he was 17, became a soloist two years later and remained with the company until 1988 when he left to pursue a career as a free-lance choreographer.

“I just felt there’s got to be more to David Allan than Blue Boy in ‘Les Patineurs’ and Alain in ‘La Fille Mal Gardee.’ All are wonderful parts; I’m not complaining about my career. But I felt I was dancing everything I would dance in my career.”

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As early as 1983, he had felt that he “was really becoming a coach potato. I was driving all my friends crazy.” One friend suggested that Allan explore new directions by participating in a company choreographic workshop, and it was there, in ‘83, that he created his first ballet, “Lento,” to the slow movement of Dvorak’s “American” Quartet.

“The next day,” Allan continued, “Veronica Tennant (the company’s principal ballerina) came to me and asked if I would create a new bravura pas de deux for her, that she could do in place of the ‘Don Q’ or ‘Corsaire’ pas de deux.”

Tennant generally was considered the first international star the company had produced, and her commission was seen as a major endorsement of the young choreographer.

He created “The Khachaturian Pas de Deux” for Tennant and dancer Serge Lavoie. Bruhn immediately brought the work into the company’s repertory--Osborne, too, would dance it--and went on to commission seven more works from Allan.

“People knew me as a dancer,” Allan recalled. “Everybody was quite shocked as to where this talent came from. Nobody was more shocked than I was. It just poured out of me.” He was 27.

Since then he has created more than 35 works for various companies and has participated twice in Peter Martins’ Diamond Project, a choreographers’ showcase for the New York City Ballet. He also spent three years as artistic director of the Riverside Ballet Theatre, a position he relinquished in January because “I just didn’t feel the community offered the support that I think the dance should have.

“To me, dance is not a hobby; it’s a way of life. Unfortunately, I find that in Southern California, there are so many little pockets of everybody doing it as a hobby. I’d like to see dance in this area become a way of life.

“I don’t know if that’s possible. If the Joffrey Ballet couldn’t make a swing at it, why do we all think we can?”

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His greatest choreographic influences have been Ashton and Jiri Kylian. “I love what they do and I feel I could never do work like that. My work is not anything like theirs. But the humanistic side of Kylian I aspire to, and the stylistic side of Ashton I aspire to.

“I think people are forgetting that even in classical ballet, it’s really what’s happening from the waist up--that is, expressing your message to the audience--that’s important. We’re so involved with ‘right foot, left foot, this step, that step’ thinking, rather than with what the step is derived from, and what pushes the movement through.”

* Works-in-progress by David Allan, Rebecca Kelly, Pascal Rioult and Paul Vasterling will be danced Saturday at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, in the culmination of Ballet Pacifica’s Choreographic Project ’94. Curtain: 8 p.m. $5. (714) 642-9275.