The Last Dance

It’s not every day that luminaries from the Hollywood, dance and academic communities convene to bid farewell to a living legend. But that is precisely what will happen today at Cal State L.A.’s Luckman Theatre, when octogenarian Bella Lewitzky, one of the West Coast’s leading modern dance figures, retires her 31-year-old company.

The evening--a combination performance, tribute and fund-raiser--features Lewitzky’s final work for this company, “Four Women in Time” (1996), and a 1984 work, “Nos Duraturi.” Excerpts from early Lewitzky works, on film, and panegyrics from members of the performing arts community are also part of the program. In addition, an exhibition of memorabilia--three decades’ worth of Lewitzky company photos, costumes, posters and programs--will be on view at the Luckman Gallery.

After the performance, gala attendees will adjourn to a tent for dinner, more tributes and a silent auction. Andrea Van de Kamp, managing director of Sotheby’s West Coast office and president of the Los Angeles Music Center Inc., emcees and presides over the auction, where 100 items, ranging from a Toyota to works of art, will go on the block to raise a targeted $250,000 to help support three Lewitzky archives.

Van de Kamp is just one member of a VIP “honorary committee” supporting the gala. The committee, drawn from politics, show business and the arts, came from “Bella’s personal list of people she wanted to thank for helping make the company possible over the 30 years,” explains Ruth Eliel, company managing director.

Cyd Charisse is one-half of one of the committee’s co-chair couples--with her husband Tony Martin, and Anjelica Huston and Robert Graham. Charisse, who overcame childhood polio to emerge as one of filmdom’s most elegant dancers, never worked with Lewitzky, but she has known her for years. She added her support to the gala, she says, because of her respect for Lewitzky’s accomplishments as “an instigator of dance.”

“Everybody hates to see her stop,” says Charisse of the 81-year-old choreographer, who decided to close down her company because she felt that too much energy was spent on keeping the organization going instead of making art. “She’s bound to be missed, [but] her work will live on and it’s wonderful that she will be honored in this way.”

In addition to the honorary committee, event organizers Yvonne Cazier and Jennifer King have had their hands full for the last year setting up the program. Cazier, a Lewitzky supporter since 1984, discussed the nuts and bolts.

“We knew it was going to be at the Luckman, because Cal State L.A. was where Bella first did her shows in 1966. We decided what our challenges were, how much our fund-raising goal was, how we were going attract people and how we would identify them. The biggest hurdle,” she said with a sigh, “is location. A lot of these people live on the Westside and are averse to traveling.”

Cazier noted that use of the Luckman was donated for the night, while the Carpenter Performing Arts Center donated box-office services. In all, 11 local performing arts organizations pitched in with donations, including those at Pepperdine University, El Camino College and UCLA, who helped provide for event advertising.

“We worked through the Lewitzky Foundation in getting the arts organizations,” Cazier said. “It speaks well for the communities that they ‘plugged in’ together.”

Michael Blachly, director of the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts, explains why.

“Bella made a significant impact on L.A. as a cultural center. She had opportunities to take her company out of Los Angeles, [but she] was one of the first to say that L.A. was a rich environment for artistic thought, and has developed that for our entire community.”

Blachly is among those scheduled to speak about Lewitzky’s contributions. There will also be tributes from the ranks of former company dancers (the organizers expect as many as 50 to attend), and from city and county representatives such as supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky and City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas.

The beneficiaries of the gala will be three collections of Lewitzky archival materials documenting the choreographer’s work and her company’s history, at the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library Dance Collection and the University of Southern California.

Eliel admits putting the archival material together is a hard job. “There’s 31 years’ worth of stuff--film, video, photographs and written documents--and more that relates to pre-1966. Personal things, like tour notes, production and financial files and programs will also be available to the community through USC.”

Lewitzky, speaking by phone from Eugene, Ore., where her company was nearing the end of its final tour, is looking forward to the gala. “I think it is an appropriate and celebratory ending to our 31 years of existence,” she said. And what happens next?

“I haven’t the foggiest notion. Whatever will happen will happen, and that,” she said, “is very exciting to me.”

* The Lewitzky Dance Company Farewell Performance and Gala, 7 p.m., today, Luckman Theatre, Cal State L.A., 5151 State University Drive. Performance only: $30-$37. Gala: $250. Exhibition, through Sunday: Free. (213) 580-6338 (gala); (310) 343-6610 (performance only).