Bonnie Oda Homsey

Sometimes, as Joni Mitchell once wrote, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." Or, as in Bonnie Oda Homsey's case, until it's been lying around ignored for a decade or more. A former lead dancer with the Martha Graham company, Homsey has worked with some of the premier figures of ballet and modern dance. But until last year, she let those experiences lie dormant while she raised kids and pursued other ventures. Then it dawned on her.

Sometimes, as Joni Mitchell once wrote, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." Or, as in Bonnie Oda Homsey's case, until it's been lying around ignored for a decade or more. A former lead dancer with the Martha Graham company, Homsey has worked with some of the premier figures of ballet and modern dance. But until last year, she let those experiences lie dormant while she raised kids and pursued other ventures. Then it dawned on her.

Some of them you know. Some you don't. But the following artists, entertainers and executives have one thing in common: We're counting on each to mae a significant impact or difference in their respective fields this year. Sure, there will be thers who make a splash, but after we talked with dozens of people who work in entertainment and the arts, these were the names mentioned most often. You might say that Jim Carrey was a face to watch in '94, and you would be right.

Some of them you know. Some you don't. But the following artists, entertainers and executives have one thing in common: We're counting on each to mae a significant impact or difference in their respective fields this year. Sure, there will be thers who make a splash, but after we talked with dozens of people who work in entertainment and the arts, these were the names mentioned most often. You might say that Jim Carrey was a face to watch in '94, and you would be right.

In the arts world, they call her “the dancing philanthropist.” And now, with her latest and largest endowment to date, Glorya Kaufman has a new dance partner in the University of Southern California. Her groundbreaking gift for the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance will establish the first new endowment-funded school at the university in 40 years. (The last was the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, which opened in 1973 with a gift from Walter H. Annenberg.)

A regional company trying to earn national renown, Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet brings Kent Stowell's "Cinderella" to the Orange County Performing Arts Center (June 13-15). Stowell is best known for the production that became "Nutcracker: The Motion Picture" in 1986. Nobody dances the 19th-Century Russian classics in versions of greater choreographic authenticity than the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden--and nobody producing these ballets takes bigger gambles on design.

In its latest program of classic modern dance solos, the American Repertory Dance Company looked into what it called the "Heart of Woman" at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall on Saturday and found distinctive universal statements about the cost of survival. For instance, Jane Dudley's 1938 "Harmonica Breakdown" imaginatively depicted resilience in hard times, with Nancy Colahan executing its recurrent stiff-kneed slide-walk so powerfully that slogging through adversity seemed gloriously heroic.

Named after the Los Angeles-based modern dance pioneer who died in 1953, the annual Lester Horton Awards celebrate excellence in local concert-dance through voting by the membership of the Dance Resource Center service organization. On Saturday, the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center hosted the fourth awards ceremony, with honoree Bella Lewitzky honoring Horton during the acceptance speech for her sustained achievement honor and reminding everyone that "this remarkable man . . .

Because photographs often represent a primary source in the reconstruction of lost choreographies, the relationship between camera and stage is unusually deep and complex for the American Repertory Dance Company, a locally based ensemble founded five years ago as a living archive of early 20th century dance.

Presenting every kind of modern dance from a reconstructed 50-year-old solo to new works flirting alternately with the commercial world and the avant-garde, the "Prime Moves" series moved to Caltech's Ramo Auditorium on Friday with a six-part program. Hae Kyung Lee's striking "Distant Voices" found Claudia Lopez dancing in slow motion on one side of the stage while James Kelly twitched and flailed at high speed on the other.

With witty puns, savage eye-rolling glances and stiff-jawed dignity, arobed Richard Move uncannily evoked the diva presence of deceased modern dance icon Martha Graham as host of an American Repertory Dance Company program Thursday at California Plaza. This reconstituted Graham fired off some splendid digs at modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn and his unconsummated marriage with Graham's idol, Ruth St. Denis.