Forward movement

Throughout the Southern California dance community, this is the summer of discontent: a time when some of our most ambitious and creative artists have been virtually paralyzed by radical cuts in state and local arts funding. It’s also when many of the highlights of the season in recent years -- the New World Flamenco Festival at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, Summerdance in Santa Barbara, BalletFest at Cal State L.A., Grand Performances at California Plaza downtown -- have been downsized or have vanished altogether because of the same shortfalls.

A number of touring attractions will provide diversions from this situation, however, and, in particular, dance at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre spotlights some of the splashiest locally based companies.

But perhaps the Ford’s most compelling dance attraction, this year as last, will be contemporary Spanish dancer-choreographer Marta Carrasco.

A year ago, Carrasco delivered a harrowing depiction of suicidal alcoholism in an hourlong solo, “Firewater” (Aiguardent). Nearly drowning herself in her hurry to empty wine jug after wine jug -- the liquid pouring out of her mouth, over her face, onto the table where she sat and down her body to the floor -- she projected the despair and fury of a dangerously troubled woman in a portrayal powerful enough to win her Spain’s top arts prize for 2003. On June 25, Carrasco will return to the Ford in another portrait of derangement, “Blanc d’Ombra/White in the Shadow,” based on the life of French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864-1943) -- protegee and mistress of Auguste Rodin -- who spent her last 30 years in an asylum.

One night later, more modern dance brilliance will heat up a local stage when the Paul Taylor Dance Company opens a two-night engagement at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Scheduled are a pair of Taylor classics -- “Runes” from 1975 and “Mercuric Tidings” from 1982 -- plus the local premiere of Taylor’s “Promethean Fire” from 2002.

Set to orchestrations of Bach, “Promethean Fire” was seen earlier this year on the PBS “Dance in America” series, where it used a combination of sculptural tableaux and frantic, fragmentary dance episodes to express Taylor’s deeply personal evocation of the sense of vulnerability, desperation and hopelessness inspired by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the war in Iraq and other recent events.

New work just as personal but on a larger scale will be on display during an engagement by William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on June 11 and 12. Forsythe is widely considered the most influential classical choreographer since the death of George Balanchine -- a contemporary abstractionist with a flair for movement experiment as well as a creator of complex and challenging dance-theater epics. Four Forsythe works are scheduled in Costa Mesa: “(N.N.N.N.),” “The Room as It Was,” “Duo” and “One Flat Thing Reproduced.”

Expect no Russian ballet this summer, but on Aug. 6, 7 and 8, Korea’s Russian-style Universal Ballet will appear at the Kodak Theatre in a new full-length “Romeo and Juliet” with music by Prokofiev and choreography by the Kirov Ballet’s former artistic director, Oleg Vinogradov. You can count on the usual sword fights, ballroom/balcony love duets and star-cross’d tragedy -- but also, we’re told, an updated ending that includes a plea for peace. In Korea, in Russia and on our own home front, that makes this Shakespearean warhorse very timely indeed.

More Prokofiev will accompany a new production of Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella” when Britain’s Royal Ballet returns to the Orange County Performing Arts Center for a six-day visit starting July 5.

Created in 1948, this “Cinderella” was the first full-length British ballet and linked some of the conventions of 19th century classicism with those of British popular theater. For example, Cinderella and her prince are definitely a ballerina and danseur noble in the Petipa tradition, while the ugly stepsisters are played by men, as in the Christmas pantomimes beloved of English audiences. Performances of Peter Wright’s much-loved staging of “Giselle” also will be part of the engagement.

Among the summer’s other major pleasures, the annual Dance Camera West Los Angeles Dance Film Festival will run from June 4 to June 26 in venues all over the map: REDCAT, the UCLA Hammer Museum, the El Rey Theatre, Coldwater Canyon Park and the Ford Amphitheatre. If you want to sample the latest dance-for-camera innovations, get deeply into documentaries or simply swoon again over “The Red Shoes,” it will all be here.

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The hot list

Marta Carrasco, John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, L.A. June 25. $12-$20. (323) 461-3673.

Paul Taylor Dance Company, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. June 26-27. $15-$50. (213) 972-0711.

Frankfurt Ballet, Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. June 11-12. $20-$75. (714) 556-2787.

Universal Ballet, Kodak Theatre, 6801 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Aug. 6-8. $22-$79. (323) 308-6363.

The Royal Ballet, Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. July 5-10. $25-$100. (714) 556-2787.

Dance Camera West, Various venues. June 4-26. $10-$22. Some events free. (213) 480-8633 or www.dancecamerawest.org.