DANCE & MUSIC NEWS : Malashock May Hang Up His Shoes

San Diego-based modern dancer- choreographer John Malashock has found a measure of security in these recessionary times. After seven years, his six-member company works with the San Diego Symphony and that city’s PBS station on high-profile projects and has become a resident institution at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park.

Malashock is currently dancing the full-evening “Broad Waters” at the Old Globe. The piece was scheduled to open Saturday night and is to be performed again this afternoon at 2 and Thursday through next Sunday evenings. This engagement, which enlists his company, two guest dancers and the 30-member San Diego Choral Artists group, may be one of the last chances to see Malashock perform.

“I’m 41 now, and getting very near the point of retiring [from dancing],” the former Twyla Tharp dancer says. “My interest is in creating work. I still like performing, but it’s not what motivates me, and I think I’ll be making that transition this year. Knowing me, I’ll probably do it quietly.”

He describes “Broad Waters” as a suite of “dance stories” to Polish folk songs arranged for chamber chorus by Henryk Gorecki. “I don’t usually work that literally,” he says, “but it definitely has a very ancient feel to it.”

An excerpt from Malashock’s “Window Dressers”--also to Gorecki--was seen on the opening “Dance Kaleidoscope” program at Cal State L.A. this summer, his company’s first performance in the Los Angeles area in a year and a half.

For now, there are no specific plans to bring “Broad Waters” north, though Malashock says, “I’m working to get the company up to L.A. again. . . . I always like to keep doing things in L.A. That’s been a really receptive area.”