When it comes to dancing, flying solo is never as easy as it looks. Both the choreographer and the dancer must use a solo's inherent economy to make a striking statement. Atmosphere, movement, musicality, design and imagination are conveyed by a sole body onstage. Fancy ensemble counterpoint work and tricky partnering moves are disallowed. And the soloist must be even more commanding than a group of dancers to ward off clock-watching and snoozing in the audience.

William Whitener discovered the perils and triumphs of solo performing when he was a dancer in Twyla Tharp's company. Ms. Tharp choreographed a 13-minute tour de force that nearly made Mr. Whitener pass out in the wings. Two decades later, Mr. Whitener, now the artistic director of the Kansas City Ballet, has decided to challenge his company's dancers with a program of solos, most of them unfamiliar, by six historically significant choreographers. Between 1905 and 1968, the choreographers - Agnes de Mille, Daniel Nagrin, Anna Sokolow, Merce Cunningham, Lotte Goslar and Michel Fokine - created these solos as independent ballets that would show off their talents. The solos will be performed from Thursday through next Sunday.
 Mr. Whitener knew that the six works, despite their variety of styles, possessed a common denominator. "A solo is a concentrated form of dancing," he said. "These solos show the fundamental nature of each choreographer's work. The elements the artist is working with are made extremely clear; they have to be clear for the work to succeed."

He also knew that his dancers, particularly the younger ones, would benefit from the process of staging them. "I think it's important for dancers to take on solo dancing early in their career, because it enhances their artistry and deepens their portrayals," he said. "It's a great deal of pressure."

Mr. Nagrin, whose 1948 work "Strange Hero" will be performed, coached the male dancers in the proper style of the piece. An artist who has choreographed works for both groups and soloists, Mr. Nagrin is aware of the difficulties inherent in filling the stage with only one person. "Strange Hero", set to a nervously syncopated score by Stan Kenton, offers a character study of a tough guy trapped in a film noir landscape. In a dramatic work like

"Strange Hero", the soloist must hold the attention of the audience for a full five minutes. "A solo is ruthless," said Mr. Nagrin, still spry at 84. "There's a thread, and if you break that thread at any point in the dance, you are in trouble." In group choreography." he added, "if the dance slows down a little, there's that beautiful girl in the leotard over on the left.

In 1928, Ms. de Mille choreographed a series of five solos for herself that depicted her imaginings of brief episodes in the life of a ballerina painted by Degas. One of those solos, "Debut at the Opera," was rescued from obscurity in 1995 by Janet Eilber, a noted Martha Graham dancer. She recovered the choreographer's notes, some of which were published in a 1928 edition of Dance magazine. "These are the studies Agnes did before she changed musical theater forever with her dancing characters in "Oklahoma!" Ms Eilber said.
"Debut at the Opera," which is set to excerpts from Delibes's "Coppelia," portrays a young ballerina steadying her nerves off stage before her solo debut. She tests out her most difficult steps, paces the wings, practices her imaginary bows and grimaces at her toe shoes in the manner of a silent movie character, all of which demand expert comic timing. "It's very Chaplinesque," Ms Eilber said. "It's not mime, but there's a person onstage going through a very recognizable trauma."

L. to R. Lisa Thorn, Lorry May, William Whitener
Photo: Steve Wilson

Apart from Fokine's well-known "The Dying Swan," which closed the program, the other solos on the bill are less literal in their representation. They are, however, no less difficult in their demands on a dancer's emotional or physical expressiveness. Ms. Sokolow's lyrical "Kaddish", set to the Ravel score of the same name for piano and voice, requires a mature range of emotional energy. Lorry May, co-director of Ms. Sokolow's Players' Project, taught the women of Kansas City Ballet the dynamics of the work, which was choreographed in 1945 near the end of World War II. "Kaddish", the Jewish prayer for the dead, is also a celebration of life," Ms. May said. "The dancer has to embody the heaviness of sorrow as well as the reverse of that - the openness and ecstasy."

Three years before Ms. Sokolow first presented "Kaddish", Merce Cunningham, then a dancer with Martha Graham's troupe, was experimenting with his own brand of modernism. One of his fist works was a 1942 solo for himself, "Totem Ancestor,"" accompanied by John Cage's music for prepared piano. Mr. Cunningham, who as a young man was blessed with marvelous jumping ability as well as a growing talent for composition, created a tough assignment for himself.

"'Totem Ancestor' has a particularly challenging sequence of jumps on the diagonal that go from a crouch to an arch in the air - and there is very little in between," Mr. Whitener said. Recreated for the Kansas City Ballet from dance notation by Daniel Roberts, a Cunningham dancer, this performance of "Totem Ancestor" is the first by a professional company in half a century.

Another solo conceived to test a young dancer's mettle, "It Starts With a Step" by Lotte Goslar, is an apt program opener because of its unmannered simplicity. Supported by a pristine Handel piano score, the solo takes the most basic elements of dance - walking, running, skipping - and expands them into pirouettes, fast footwork and leaping. Then in a master stroke, it winds down again in a period for four and a half minutes.

All of the solos on the program can make a theatrical impact. Whether portraying an anxious Parisian girl, embodying raw grief or physically manifesting the structure of the music, a soloist can't fake it. "The challenge is to establish a balance where the dancing and the atmosphere are working together to achieve a desired effect," Mr. Whitener said. "That's a combination of the choreographic ideas and the interpretation of the individual."