Koresh troupe moves to its new home

A dance company, like a sports team, must raise money, balance books, secure venues, attract and cater to fans, funders and investors, scout great physical specimens, then train them and keep them working. But while, say, a soccer team can rely on public dollars to build it a new stadium, a dance company is pretty much on its own when it comes to finding the right space.

The Koresh Dance Company has solved this problem handily in a deal with the Philadelphia Theatre Company (PTC), which has agreed to share its space in the new Suzanne Roberts Theatre on South Broad Street. Koresh opens there tonight and performs through Sunday.

Ronen (Roni) Koresh, the founder, choreographer and artistic director of the 16-year-old company, brokered the deal with the help of his brother, Alon. Although the two have exhibited sufficient business savvy to double the company's budget - from $400,000 in 2002 to $800,000 this year - they're still a long way from being able to build their own theater.

Instead, a chance remark by Koresh board vice president David Cooper to PTC board member Joanne Harmelin led to a meeting between Roni Koresh and PTC executive director Sara Goronzik. They agreed that Koresh would become the Roberts' resident dance company, with two four-night runs each season.

Like the Wilma Theater a block up Broad Street, the 365-seat Roberts has excellent sightlines and a sprung floor for dance. The downside: Its proscenium is only 30 feet wide - a little tight for this gazellelike company, which often looks as if it could stampede across a savanna in seconds.

But size matters less than location, and Koresh's move to the Roberts makes Philadelphia the only major U.S. city to have four dance companies within two blocks of one another. The Pennsylvania Ballet has long traveled between the Merriam Theater and the Academy of Music; Philadanco has been in residence at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater since its 2001 opening; and, as of last November, BalletX is the Wilma's resident company.

Each company brings its own dance style to the Avenue of the Arts - classical ballet, contemporary ballet, modern dance, jazz dance - and each hopes for some crossover audience-building.

"We'll deal with the small size of the proscenium," Koresh said of the Roberts during a recent rehearsal at the company's studios at 20th and Chestnut. "It does have a good bouncy floor and is the right amount of seating for a company our size. But it's the location that will give us greater visibility."

Koresh started out in the '80s with the Philadelphia jazz dance phenomenon WAVES. While his horizons have expanded far beyond jazz dance, he retains its signature look of speed, with some synchronized, large ensemble dancing, storytelling drama, and big, explosive finales.

This week, he splits the program between two of his world premieres and a U.S. premiere by guest choreographer Itzik Galili, director of Galili Dance in the Netherlands.

Koresh's opening work is

Theater of Public Secrets

, which he says ranges "from funny to euphoric." At rehearsal the dancers honed off-balance limping, demi-pointe squats, and running backward like film in reverse.

Koresh commissioned Irish composer/painter Karl Mullen, who now lives in Philadelphia, to score his second work on the program,

One of Twenty

. He describes the choreography and the music as "very industrial, abstract and somewhat aggressive."

The ebullient Galili, like Koresh, is Israeli-born and served in the Israeli army before discovering dance. His choreography is in such demand throughout Europe that he lives in Holland, visiting his three children in Israel every 10 days or so. The Economist last year said of his work, "Like his native land, it is defiant, extrovert and very tough."

Between rehearsals this week, Galili said of

Things I Told Nobod

y, "This piece is lyrical and attentive to the music" and ends the program in a fashion unlike the usual dramatic Koresh finale. The last section is set to music of Eric Satie, he said, "and it's the most dangerous - so specific and delicate, finishing very small and intimate - in contrast to everything that went before."