Friday, April 3, 1998 | 9 a.m.
By last Friday, the pressure inside the mirrored studio at Nevada Dance Theatre was already beginning to mount.
With an air of focused intensity, dancers wearing worn leotards and battered slippers broke away from the barre where they had been limbering up and launched into yet another rehearsal of "Romeo and Juliet."
"Arched backs!" artistic director Bruce Steivel gently reminded a group of dancers, posing in the background.
Seated by the door, casually clad in a blue Fila sweatsuit, he appeared relaxed, but a little weary.
"One, two, three, one, two, three," he counted aloud as a trio of male dancers leapt across the rubber mats.
"I would love to have one more week," Steivel admits later. "But then, if I had another week, I'd say 'I wish I had one more week.' "
Taking the spotlight
"Romeo and Juliet" -- which runs through Sunday at UNLV's Judy Bayley Theatre -- is the last act of the season for NDT. But it also marks a new beginning for the 25-year-old dance company and its artistic director.
Since assuming his post last October, Steivel has remained largely behind the scenes -- becoming acquainted with dancers and board members, assessing budgets and preparing for the 1998-99 season -- while his predecessor, NDT founder Vassili Sulich, staged several final productions for the company.
However, with this week's debut of "Romeo and Juliet" -- his first full-length production before a Las Vegas audience -- Steivel is finally taking center stage.
"My goal is for the audience to go away thinking, 'This is an exciting company,' " he says. "I think if we can just get people out of their houses to come and sample what we're doing, I think they'll come back."
Hal De Becker, dance critic for CityLife newspaper, who also writes for the dance industry publication Dirt Alert, thinks Steivel may actually be able to accomplish that. "I think the company has vastly improved under his direction," he says.
"I'm sincerely impressed with his youthful energy and his commitment to improving the company and leading it into the 21st century."
'It was very good'
Steivel's inaugural year at NDT has been somewhat hectic and disorganized, coming as it did on the heels of Sulich's unexpected and controversial resignation from the company.
But for the North Carolina native, who is only now wrapping up a three-year contract as artistic director of the Universal Ballet Company in Seoul, Korea, it's also been a productive time.
"It was very good," Steivel says, "because I got to know the dancers quite well before I actually had to do anything of substance with them."
This past season gave Steivel a chance to determine whether he would need to replace any of the dancers. (During an interview with the SUN last August, he said he would reserve judgment until he had a chance to work with the group.)
Happily, he's decided to keep them all.
"There's no one in the company that has an attitude problem and that's wonderful to me," he says. "They're willing to work, and at a lot of companies you don't find that. At a lot of companies they're just there to collect their paycheck."
For Clarice Geissel, a principal dancer with the company who play Juliet in several of this week's productions, Steivel's decision is good news. "This is the third year everyone in the company has been together and that helps out a lot," she says, adding: "The dancers are really enjoying this year, and I am as well."
But while Steivel inherited a well-formed group of dancers, he also was handed a completed schedule for the season.
"They chose it before they chose me," Steivel says of the board's decision to go with "Romeo and Juliet." He's not complaining, though.
"It's like it was meant to be," he says. "I had intended to do it for the Hong Kong Ballet before I left the company and went to Korea. And ever since I've been working on it in my head.
"(But) I really started work on this five weeks ago, so it's been a push to get it done."
Lots to do
As stressful as it has been to pull together the production, Steivel won't be taking any vacations when the curtain falls on "Romeo and Juliet": That's when the real work begins.
"The upcoming season is very busy," he says. "There are a lot of new things happening so there's a lot we're going to have to do to get the community involved."
In August, NDT will perform under a contract with the city at Lorenzi Park. In October, the board will stage a major fund-raising gala, with guests coming in from out of town. "I want to spend more time out in the community, talking to people," Steivel says. "I want to broaden the company's financial base."
A former dancer who is keenly aware of the financial hardships dancers face during the off-season, Steivel also hopes to lengthen NDT's season. "My goal would be to have a 52-week contract for them, but that's several years down the road," he says. (This year the season lasted 26 weeks; Next year it will run 30 weeks.)
Steivel has also been looking at ways to improve the beleaguered Academy, NDT's educational branch. Two major points of contention -- its lack of a syllabus and NDT's apparent reluctance to recruit its own students into the company -- have already been addressed. "We've brought in a syllabus," Steivel says, adding that it will take some time to fully implement it. And he's offered trainee or apprentice contracts to several Academy students. "We hope over the next couple of years more will be able to come into the company."
After NDT moves to its new Summerlin digs -- the date has been pushed back from September to January -- Steivel plans to broaden the curriculum, adding commercial dancing such as tap, jazz and hip-hop, and increase the number of classes available. "Children at the age of 12 should be doing three or four classes a week, and they can't do that here -- we don't have the studio space."
Coordinated chaos
In fact, NDT's current studio hardly seems large enough to hold the dozens of dancers who will be performing in "Romeo and Juliet."
There is well-orchestrated chaos as oranges and apples fly and swords clatter during a street-fighting scene. Moments later, groups of dancers move into the background, and soloists come forward to perform their pieces.
Choreographing these scenes was a piece of cake for Steivel, a former principal dancer with several noted ballet companies around the world. But the "mime scenes," in which characters must convey key elements of the story without dancing, were another story.
"Like where the father and mother come into Juliet's bedroom and (the father) is very angry with her because she said she won't marry Paris -- that was difficult," he says. "It's very simple but one has to make sure it's very clear to the audience."
By last Friday, elements of these scenes remained unresolved. Yet Steivel remained characteristically calm. Says Geissel: "He's very even-keeled."
"He's really been a pleasure to work with," adds David Gruzin, stage manager of Artemus Ham Hall. "He knows what he wants and he knows how to get it from people in a positive way."
After working well into the evening on Saturday, Steivel and the dancers had managed to iron out those "mime scenes" and put the finishing touches on some of the more compelling dance segments.
The fight scene between Romeo and Tybalt was particularly moving, according to several spectators who watched the rehearsal.
"People go 'Wow!' " Steivel says.
"And that's what I'd like them to say about everything."
This weekend will reveal local audiences' response to to "Romeo and Juliet." But Steivel's performance seems to be earning high marks already.
"The dancers all seem to have an improved attitude that shows onstage," De Becker says. "They just seem happier and more content."
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