A Ballet To Share Spokane May Become Third City In Ballet Alliance

Ballet weaves a bright color into the cultural fabric of a city. It is movement and sound, and aesthetics honed to high art.

When a city has a resident ballet company, it’s a place “young dancers press their noses to the window and see dance being made,” says Spokane dance enthusiast Philip Broadbent.

For the first time in a decade, Spokane is poised to call a ballet troupe its own.

Western Ballet Theatre, a company of 20 dancers shared by Eugene, Ore., and Boise is flirting with local movers and shakers in the ballet community, and the attraction seems to be mutual.

In May, the troupe will perform the full-length classical ballet “Romeo and Juliet” in the Spokane Opera House as a test of community interest. It’s not a pass or fail situation, but should the reaction of Spokane dance fans score higher than tepid, WBT and the Spokane dance community could agree to go steady.

What would that relationship look like? It’s largely undefined. Now the dancers live and rehearse in Boise and have a ballet school there; the primary administrative offices are in Eugene, and the agency that books the company tours is in San Francisco. There are separate boards of directors in Eugene and Boise, and the troupe performs four seasons (multiple performances of the same program) in each city.

Most likely, WBT would commit to performing four seasons a year in Spokane at the Opera House, but beyond that, the relationship would be Spokane’s to design, says Riley Grannan, WBT managing director, who is based in Eugene.

A number of cities have shared a ballet company - San Jose and Cleveland, Seattle and Minneapolis, Knoxville and Tulsa, Denver and Tampa, Cincinnati and New Orleans, and New York and Los Angeles.

Sharing a company, especially given the geographic distance, seldom works well or for long. Alberta Ballet, which splits its time between Edmonton and Calgary, is an exception. But even in that case, the organization endures some friction as the cities periodically vie as the de facto home base, the city where the dancers actually live and rehearse and, more important, where the board of directors operates.

“The arrangement of Eugene and Boise is unique among ballet companies,” Grannan says. “This is an alliance, not a merger. The separate boards (of directors) and separate staffs makes for an interesting and positive dynamic.

“It also allows a community chauvinism, which is important in the Northwest. People want to feel ownership.”

To foster that sense of ownership, the company dances as Eugene Ballet when in Oregon and as Ballet Idaho for Idaho performances. In Spokane, it will dance as Western Ballet Theatre.

Prior to Eugene Ballet’s arrival, Boise had American Festival Ballet, which had been founded in Moscow but became a joint company shared by Moscow and Boise. In the late ‘80s, American Festival Ballet suffered from financial woes and political infighting.

Boise ended up with the troupe, and in 1989 the company severed ties with Moscow and drew the financial attention and social muscle of Esther Simplot, wife of billionaire potato magnate J.R. Simplot. The Simplots threw fund-raising dinners to take care of a $200,000 debt, bought and remodeled an old furniture store in downtown Boise and offered dressing rooms, classrooms and rehearsal space virtually rent-free to the ballet company and the city’s opera company and orchestra.

Three years ago, American Festival Ballet again suffered from administrative chaos - the much-touted Russian artistic director Ben Kuzmichev left the company under adverse circumstances. It was opportune, then, to sign an alliance with Eugene Ballet, an easy transition since the two companies were so similar. Both toured the Western states extensively, performing in predominantly smaller communities; both garnered an impressive array of grants to take dance into schools and community centers for educational purposes, and both danced in a major performance space in their home cities - Eugene Ballet in Hult Center on the University of Oregon campus, AFB in Morrison Center on the Boise State University campus. Many of the AFB dancers became WBT dancers and the transition was practically seamless.

“The alliance with Boise allowed us to solve production issues,” says Grannan. “When we mount a major production like ‘Swan Lake,’ we aren’t just playing one theater and going out on tour. The rehearsal costs and costumes and sets are amortized between two cities. And to have a rehearsal space that is free of charge is to die for. From an administrative perspective, it’s a godsend.”

A formal understanding with Spokane, however, would look quite different from the existing Boise-Eugene marriage. For one, Spokane does not have a professional ballet company, hence no dancers, administrative offices or a board of directors.

“Spokane did have a very active ballet company in the past and clearly there’s a lot of interest in having professional dance there,” says Grannan.

One of the aspects Western Ballet Theatre would bring to the city is master classes, which, rather than competing with existing dance schools here, would serve as an adjunct.

“The most important thing dance students need is to see professional dance,” says Margaret Goodner, director of one of Spokane’s most prominent ballet schools, Ballet Arts Academy. “Dancers are visual learners and they need to learn from these professional role models. And, if we have a formal arrangement with a professional company, I hope the company would incorporate advanced-level dancers through an audition process into the corps positions in the company, just as Alberta Ballet does with ‘The Nutcracker.’ We have dancers in Spokane who have enough skills to be doing entry-level corps work.”

Former professional dancer Phillip Broadbent, who, as owner of Empire Dance Shop, is a vocal supporter of dance in this city, says an agreement with an existing professional company “might be the next best thing to home-grown product and the product doesn’t seem to be materializing in Spokane.

“The upside of this WBT arrangement would be live performances. The WBT artistic director, Toni Pimble, is quite famous for choreography that focuses on the region. That is the ultimate - having choreography that reflects the community so when people go see the arts, they see themselves.”

While some in the local ballet community have spoken out in favor of an agreement with WBT, it’s local entertainment promoter Wayne Larson who actually sought out Grannan and engaged in talks about forging an alliance. Larson, under the auspices of his Debut Northwest series, already brings in ethnic dance troupes such as the Jose Greco Flamenco Dancers, who performed Friday at The Met, and the Lakota Sioux Indian Dance Company, due here Feb. 6.

Larson’s also the one taking the financial risk in bringing WBT here to perform “Romeo and Juliet.” He says he will be involved in bringing the company back to perform next season, but as far as the alliance, ballet fans need to step up to the barre.

While WBT has already reserved space in its 1998-1999 schedule for Spokane appearances, Grannan says WBT is not interested in a situation in which the troupe just comes to town to perform three or four times a year and leaves.

“We are interested in advancing dance in the community. I feel there needs to be a community commitment. It isn’t just get in and then leave. It’s get in and get committed to getting people inspired and exploring how young dancers can be involved in the productions and develop as dancers.”

For now, the flirting continues between WBT and Spokane dance enthusiasts. Grannan is clear the company isn’t interested in just a one-night stand: “We’re not … a bus-and-truck show.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

MEMO: These 2 sidebars appeared with the story:

1. WESTERN BALLET THEATRE Name: The ballet company dances as Eugene Ballet in Oregon, as Ballet Idaho in Idaho and as Western Ballet Theatre elsewhere. Founded: 1978 Idaho Dancers: 20 Artistic staff: 2 Administrative staff: 4 Number of performances a year: More than 100 Number of states in which performed: 32 Budget: $1,300,000 Repertoire: Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, The Firebird, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Nutcracker, Bolero, mixed repertoire.

2. RESIDENT PROFESSIONAL BALLET IN SPOKANE Early 1970s to 1980: Heritage Dance Theatre (began as a pre-professional company and evolved into Spokane Ballet) Spokane Ballet: 1980-1989 Ballet Company of Spokane: 1991-1993