A Prize-Winning Duo : Choreographer, Soprano to Receive $25,000 Chandler Awards

Choreographer Bill T. Jones and soprano Kallen Esperian have been named winners of this year’s Dorothy B. Chandler Performing Arts Awards. A cash prize of $25,000 and a bronze statuette by L.A. artist Robert Graham will be presented to the winners June 9 at the Music Center.

The awards are given annually to outstanding young artists representing the best in the fields of vocal and instrumental music, theater and dance. Only two winners were named this year, the second time the award has been presented.

Jones is a Bessie award winner who recently presented his controversial “Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land” at UCLA. Esperian, a protegee of Luciano Pavarotti, has performed in leading roles internationally.

Jones, 39, called the award “one of those things that really encourages a choreographer to go on.”

“I’m quite moved,” he said from his dance studio in New York. “But it’s a bit of a responsibility--there’s something in the wording of the award about leading America into the 21st Century. If I can come close, I’ll be honored.”

Jones, whose work at UCLA last month featured a host of nude dancers and dealt with questions of faith, race and sexuality, has previously received a Creative Artists Public Service Award in choreography and three choreographic fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1982 Jones co-founded the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Co. dance group (Zane died of AIDS in 1988). Jones said the $25,000 award will help with the day-to-day financial struggles of keeping a progressive dance company afloat and “could possibly keep the lights on and the rent paid for about three months.”

Esperian, a Memphis resident who has performed in Los Angeles only once before--in a “very small part” in the 1985 Opera Theatre of St. Louis production of “The Beggar’s Opera”--said: “I just hope that I can live up to their expectations of me, that five years from now they will say, ‘Look what she’s done--we were right to have picked her.’ ”

The 29-year-old soprano began her career as the winner of the Luciano Pavarotti international Voice Competition in 1985, and her roles have included her Met debut in 1989 opposite tenor Placido Domingo in “La Boheme” and last fall’s season opening of Paris’ new Opera de la Bastille as Desdemona in “Otello” (again opposite Domingo).

Her major Los Angeles debut is scheduled for the fall of 1993 in the Music Center Opera presentatin of “La Boheme.”

Jones and Esperian will receive their awards from their corresponding “20th Century Masters of the Arts”--soprano Dame Gwyneth Jones and American Ballet Theater principal dancer Cynthia Gregory--at the June 9 black-tie gala featuring “salon-style” performances by both winners in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Choreographer Jones was selected by Gerald Arpino, artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet, who said the unconventional Jones was “in the mainstream of the future of dance in America.” Arpino called him “an exceptional creative talent in the theater of American dance that will stir future generations of dancers to be unafraid, to dare, and to challenge the souls of men.”

Esperian was chosen by Peter Hemmings, general director of the Music Center Opera, in a joint selection with Domingo. Domingo was performing and could not be reached for comment, but Hemmings said, “I heard (Esperian) sing Desdemona with Mr. Domingo in ‘Otello’ last spring, and at that moment there was in both our minds absolutely no doubt that this was the girl who will be in the front of our minds for years to come.”

In addition to the June 9 gala, which is scheduled to feature masters of ceremonies Kirk Douglas, Anjelica Huston and Michael York and special guest Domingo, the Music Center has planned a May 5 reception dinner to introduce the winners.

The awards were established to honor Dorothy Buffum Chandler and are made possible through a grant from the Chandler Family Trust. The gala is co-sponsored by Lexus, J.P. Morgan California and Fred Hayman. The reception diner will be sponsored and hosted by the Ritz-Carlton, Huntington Hotel.

The original award winners--in 1989--were choreographer Charles Moulton, designer-producer Julie Taymor and violinist Midori.