In the lean years - and there were many - a bad economy might have knocked Pennsylvania Ballet off the map. But in 2009, after years of improving fiscal health, the company has been able to tighten its belt, focus on the priorities, and find creative ways to deal with it.

"Fifteen years ago, maybe we wouldn't have been able to find our way through problems like this," says artistic director Roy Kaiser, in his office at the company's East Falls studios. "We can't do what we do with 10 fewer dancers. I think a lot of businesses, you can expand and contract depending on what the market is. You can't do that with ballet companies. If you start to contract and you contract to any degree, it takes years to build it back up."

New York City Ballet laid off 11 dancers in July. Miami City Ballet danced the second half of the 2008-09 season to recorded music. Pennsylvania Ballet opens its season tomorrow night - Balanchine, Rodeo and a world premiere - with its full roster of about 40 dancers, and its orchestra.

"A very, very easy way to save $1 million-plus is to lose the orchestra," Kaiser says. "There are companies doing that. We're not."

Instead, Pennsylvania Ballet - where he has worked for 30 of the troupe's 46 years - has chosen pay freezes and furloughs. The non-artistic staff has shrunk by five from its 22 positions through attrition, and those jobs are going unfilled. The orchestra played a benefit concert for the company last month; the union musicians worked for free and the Kimmel Center provided the Perelman Theater at a deep discount.

"Preliminarily we cleared about $10,000" from the concert, says company executive director Michael Scolamiero.

While these measures are helping, it hasn't been easy.

"We did have a deficit last year," Scolamiero says. "It was the largest deficit we've had in, say, 15 years."

They saw it coming. The company's $10.1 million budget already had been passed (this year's is $10.1 million as well), but by spring, the administration was planning for a 2 percent loss. Instead, Scolamiero says, the deficit turned out to be 10 percent.

"A lot of it is the economy, and also, the trend over the last several years is that people are passing on the up-front commitment," he says. "The beauty of subscriptions is that you have the money up front and you don't have to spend the money on advertising. The single-ticket purchaser is much more fickle. You have to spend a considerable sum of money to bring them in the door."

Even there, the ballet is finding ways to cut back, through social-media advertising and other less expensive methods. In 2008-09, the company spent 29 cents of every ticket-sale dollar to fill seats, down from 39 cents the year before, he says. This season's ticket sales are still down a little, Scolamiero says.

All this is a bit too familiar to Kaiser, whose first official role at the helm in 1994 was to deliver a blow.

"Surprise, surprise, there was a little financial distress when I took over," he says. "I didn't even realize - looking back, I was very naive. They appointed me interim artistic director, and the first thing I got to do was go in and tell the dancers that we were cutting four weeks out of their season."

The company didn't even perform in Philadelphia that fall. Instead, their season started in late October at the prestigious Kennedy Center in Washington, a date that had been scheduled well in advance.

"So the first time the curtain went up with my name on it was at the Kennedy Center," Kaiser says. "And, thankfully, it went very well."

The situation is not as dire this time, but there are shades of 1994. The traditional February program has been eliminated and, through creative scheduling, two programs were fitted in back-to-back in March. By opting to fill nights when the Academy of Music would have been dark, they saved numerous expenses, Kaiser says.

Kaiser has seen nearly every up and down at the organization since the summer of 1978, when, at 21, he was to spend six weeks studying at the School of the Pennsylvania Ballet. He never left.

Along the way, he did something all but unheard of: moved through every step of the ranks. He has held the top position for 15 years, making the 2009-10 season a double anniversary. His 30 years with the company will be celebrated at a black-tie gala Friday night.

But even in the challenging economy, he says, the company's priorities never changed.

"From Day One, I wanted to build a company that really performs an exciting and varied repertoire and performs it at a very high level. I want the best talent that I can bring to Philadelphia."

One thing that had to move to a back burner is a planned move to a permanent home, in a former halfway house on Broad Street near Vine. Plans have been scaled back, and there's no target date yet, but Pennsylvania Ballet owns the building and things are moving forward - slowly.

"It's no longer on simmer," Scolamiero says. "It's on warming, and hopefully it will be bubbling in the next six months."

After that, the goal is to open a school. Pennsylvania Ballet is the only major company in the country that does not currently have artistic control over a school, a fact that clearly bothers Kaiser.

The irony is that the school existed before the company. But the two separated in 1992, when what is now the Rock School for Dance Education became an independent nonprofit. The divorce was finalized two years ago when the ballet moved out of the South Broad building.

The new home and school will not just be good for the company, Scolamiero says.

"I think it will be a huge benefit to the northern end of the Avenue of the Arts."

Contact writer Ellen Dunkel at edunkel@philly.com.