Choreographers

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.

"The arts are under threat more than ever before," California dance matriarch Bella Lewitzky said Saturday to the audience that had just seen the gala final performance of her 31-year-old modern dance company. "What legacy I have left here will die unless you become responsible for keeping it alive."

Choreographer Stephen Petronio doesn't know whether he has the virus that causes AIDS. It's not that he suspects he's positive, necessarily. He's robustly healthy. But Petronio, who leads a relaxation workshop for HIV-positive people today in Irvine, used to get tested every now and then but doesn't anymore. "I just live like I'm positive," said the shaven-headed bad boy of New York postmodern dance.

Tandy Beal has developed a weighty resume as a performer and choreographer. Founder of the 20-year-old contemporary-dance troupe Tandy Beal and Company, the Santa Cruz artist has created and performed more than 100 works, including one of the very few contemporary-dance versions of the "Nutcracker." That show premiered in 1982 and was seen in Orange County in a 1986 Cal State Fullerton performance.

"Stealing time" is a term musicians use to describe the idea of flexibility in playing a phrase. It's also the name of the new work choreographer David Allan has created for Ballet Pacifica's final program of the season, on Friday and Saturday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. "It's what dancers do all their lives," Allan said in a recent phone interview from his office at UC Irvine, where he has taught for five years. "Ballet class steals your time.

In a bid to keep her most innovative idea alive from her days leading Ballet Pacifica, Molly Lynch will head a new National Choreographers Initiative, Lynch and supporters announced Monday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. The project is to begin July 6 and culminate in a series of works created by four choreographers to be presented July 24 at the Irvine theater.

IN the past, choreographer Maria Gillespie wasn't a fan of participating in group shows. "I was opposed to them because they didn't allow me to dive deep enough into my own vision," she says. But when Gillespie was offered the opportunity to join forces with two other L.A.-based contemporary choreographers, she experienced a change of heart. And, she says, "I wound up taking the most risk artistically that I ever have."

Linda LACK, Hae Kyung Lee and Bradley Michaud have very different ideas about dance making. Just consider what they require to collectively put on a show. Lack needs a 9-foot lizard sculpture and various animal masks. Michaud and his dancers will not hurl themselves into the air without their kneepads. Lee, meanwhile, simply brings the inspiration she derives from her spiritual life and Korean heritage.

"For me, the work is almost like an emotional diary," reflects Nina Wiener as she discusses how she approaches making dances. "I finish a piece, look at it and say, 'That's interesting; I hadn't realized I felt that way.' " The tall, lean choreographer, who exudes casual glamour, is sipping tea in her Tribeca loft while the season's first snowfall blunts the city's harsher edges. But her mind is on a very different terrain--that of Australia, which inspired her latest dance.

After two kids, a college degree and employment as a social worker, Dianne Walker returned at 28 to tap-dance, a passion she had pursued as a youth. It all started--again--with a simple hello. One day in 1979, Walker told an acquaintance that she yearned to learn "real" tap, "like I'd seen in the movies--not like they teach you in dancing school," she said. The friend recommended that she look up tap master Leon Collins, then also living in Boston.