IS ANYONE COUNTING? : MODERN DANCE TROUPE MARKING ITS 25TH YEAR

The Gloria Newman Dance Theater, Orange County’s most distinguished home-based modern dance troupe, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, but don’t expect to see any hometown cake-cutting celebrations.

At least not for a while.

Despite a much ballyhooed rush to assert cultural coming-of-age with the new Performing Arts Center, the county’s attitude toward the highly regarded Newman troupe seems to have been one of benign neglect.

So the celebration year will kick off with concerts at 8 tonight and Saturday at Cal State Los Angeles.

Works scheduled include Newman’s “Departures” (music by the Cafe Orchestra) and “Cantata, Part One” (set to a tape collage) and “Each to His Own Rag” choreographed by associate company director Gladys Kares to music by Scott Joplin and others.

The programs also celebrate the first anniversary of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts--where the chairman of the dance department, Don Bondi, is an alumnus of Newman’s original California company.

Altogether, Newman, who moved to the Southland from New York in 1961, has choreographed more than 50 works.

She has commissioned and re-created works by major modern dance figures, including choreographers Anna Sokolow, Donald MaKayle and Donald Byrd.

She has received five major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and her 10-member company was invited to participate in the 1984 Olympics Arts/California Dance Festival.

Still, her troupe has yet to find a permanent performing home.

“We have scoured the county in terms of places that would be suitable for my company, but without finding one,” Newman said in a recent phone interview.

“It’s really curious. There are so many schools in this area that are training tremendously good dancers, but there’s no outlet for them to perform in and no place for them to go with professional training after they graduate.”

Ideally, according to Newman, “dance needs a focal point--a theater which presents dance all year long--but that’s not available here.”

To be sure, the Performing Arts Center brings in major companies such as New York City Ballet or American Ballet Theatre, with the help of the Center Dance Alliance support group.

“But the major portion of that effort does not serve us,” Newman said.

Meanwhile, a countywide dance support effort under the umbrella of the Orange County Arts Alliance has been only modestly helpful, according to Newman.

“It’s hard to get any kind of organization as a cohesive force where the members are at different levels of interest. We haven’t been successful even in the sense of creating a simple calendar of events, like the Los Angeles Area Dance Alliance (LAADA) used to do. An organization like that should serve as a force for dance. . . . It’s such a slow way of building an audience, piece by piece,” she sighed. “And yet we think we have a following.”

Newman said that her company has managed to survive “on small donations and memberships.”

“Our need now is to branch out,” she said. “That’s one reason we will be doing small studio performances. That’s what I’m hoping the next step will be. Many dancers in the company are starting to do individual work, which we can show there. I like to encourage that.”

Newman said she keeps the company working “all year because you can’t work as a pickup company. You have to build on what has been done before.”

Newman said she has other events planned for the anniversary year, including spring workshops in Newport Beach and summer classes at Orange Coast College. But other events will take the company out of the county and out of the state.

“We’re hoping to do something at UCI next February,” she said. “But they’re on a very limited budget. When you have a limitation, and the budget supposedly includes all the arts, dance usually gets the smallest proportion. So every avenue you turn, you have the same problem.”

Does Newman feel discouraged?

“Well, it certainly does get hard. But I have such a passion for dance. And art itself is so nourishing. It keeps you alive.”