San Diego’s State of the Arts: Dance

It’s 9: 45 on a weekday morning and Steven Wistrich, artistic director of City Ballet of San Diego, is leading his company in a class at their Pacific Beach headquarters.

While the piano accompanist plays works by such composers as Chopin and Schumann, the dancers follow Wistrich as he expertly demonstrates the steps. With hands resting on the ballet barre, they practice intricate sequences involving battements and relevés, pliés and piqué turns, all reflecting the rigorous training.

Legs slice the air with blade-like precision. Backs stretch as easily as rubber bands. Arms float gracefully as if held aloft by invisible balloons.

So complete is the devotion that the class seems to exist in a timeless realm where only ballet matters and nothing could possibly threaten it.

Yet City Ballet was in serious danger as recently as December. Ticket sales plunged 25% for “The Nutcracker,” usually the troupe’s most popular offering, causing company leaders to fear that recession-battered City Ballet might not survive beyond its 16^th season.

“The economy hit ‘Nutcracker’ — we didn’t expect that at all,” said managing director Jo Anne Emery, who works closely with Wistrich and his wife, resident choreographer Elizabeth Wistrich, the co-director of City Ballet School. “We thought, ‘What are we going to do?’”

Coming to the rescue were donors who refused to let City Ballet die. They include Lael Kovtun, Jacquelyn Littlefield (owner/operator of downtown’s Spreckels Theatre) and longtime supporter Richard Helmstetter, who provided a $50,000 matching grant.

Help also arrived from an unlikely source — Reno, Nevada. In late December, ballet-lovers there took a risk on City Ballet’s single “Nutcracker” performance at the Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, and the gamble paid off. The 1,800-seat venue sold out and the response was so enthusiastic that City Ballet is planning to make Reno its home-away-from-home, with three productions slated there next season.

“Reno will be our salvation,” said Emery, touting the benefits of the company performing in both cities. “They’ve always wanted a ballet company of their own but knew they couldn’t sustain one. So they said: ‘Why don’t you come here?’”

Though other San Diego dance groups may not have life-or-death tales as dramatic as City Ballet’s, they’re also confronting financial realities and doing their best to remain true to their missions.

Just as there is much to worry about, there’s also much to appreciate. Dance fans can choose from a vast array of Terpsichorean offerings.

Visiting ensembles are presented by such arts-savvy organizations as the La Jolla Music Society and UCSD’s ArtPower! Adventurous offerings arrive care of Sushi Performance & Visual Art.

Accomplished local companies include Malashock Dance and Eveoke Dance Theatre as well as San Diego Ballet and Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater, which recently honored the veteran choreographer with the “Jean Isaacs 35^th Anniversary Retrospective Concert” at San Diego State University.

None are immune to fiscal pressure. Not even California Ballet, now in its 41^st season. Founder/director Maxine Mahon has experienced the downturn both personally and professionally. In January, she fell down the stairs of the company’s Kearny Mesa headquarters while carrying costumes. She broke her right ankle, which required surgery.

“I got my feet tangled in the costumes and went over like a dead tree,” she explained.

That wasn’t the only blow. The El Cajon branch of the California Ballet School closed in September due to concerns about its financial viability. And because of insufficient ticket sales, the company cancelled its performances of the ballet classic “Coppelia” at downtown’s Civic Theatre.

“All of a sudden, after Christmas, ticket sales just stopped,” Mahon said. “We originally planned three performances. Then we cut them to two. Then we dropped ‘Coppelia’ altogether.”

But it seems like nothing can keep Mahon — or her company — down for long. California Ballet is already offering a 20% “early bird” discount on adult tickets for December’s “Nutcracker” performances at the Civic Theatre.

Mahon views the recession like a seasoned survivor of financial battles.

“We’ll get through it. We’ve had economic downturns before,” she said. “Staying alive is the focus. We’ll do what we can to keep dancers onstage.”

By contrast, UCSD’s ArtPower has made a specialty of importing foreign dance companies as part of its programming, which also features art, music, story-telling and more.

“Dance is a huge love for me so it’s really important,” said ArtPower’s artistic director, Martin Wollesen, who has been in charge since 2004. “Some of the most interesting work is happening on an international scale right now.”

At first, Wollesen wasn’t sure that local audiences would respond to such unabashedly inventive troupes as Brazil’s Grupo Corpo or Australia’s Chunky Move dance company.

“I was concerned at the beginning about introducing companies that hadn’t been here before,” he recalled. “To my surprise, there was a very open and interested audience. Contemporary dance as an art form is still uncommon for a lot of people and they’re blown away by what they see at ArtPower.

“They may expect fluffy little ballets. But they find that artists are doing intense and powerful stuff,” added Wollesen, who intends to announce next season’s lineup in June.

Ticket revenue accounts for about 45% of ArtPower’s budget, with the rest coming from donors, grants, foundations and a modest endowment.

More than ever, ticket sales are crucial to an organization’s health. So Eveoke Dance Theatre experimented with a strategy that proved surprisingly successful.

The troupe used a pay-what-you-can policy for the month-long, 16-performance run of its program “Lyrics, Beats and Bricks,” which ran through mid-December at the Tenth Avenue Theatre.

“The response was so good,” said Erika Malone, who served as programs director before becoming development director at the company that’s now in its 14^th season. “The average payment was between $10 and $12 per ticket.”

Why so much when patrons could have paid a much smaller contribution?

Malone believes it’s because the “people who tend to come to our shows are friends of friends. Maybe their hearts were in a different place because they were coming with people who love Eveoke.”

Another attraction may be the company’s collaborative spirit.

“The idea of collaboration is really new and helpful,” said Malone, citing as one example Eveoke’s “Voices: Mapping the Hood” (May 8-June 30), a multimedia dance theater production and visual arts installation that focuses on North Park and City Heights. And Eveoke’s 13^th annual Celebrate Dance Festival will be held Aug. 21-23 in Balboa Park. Free to the public, it will showcase everything from ballet to hip-hop.

Also moving ahead is Malashock Dance, now in its 21^st season under the direction of choreographer John Malashock, a former member of Twyla Tharp’s company.

“We’re in kind of a funny position,” said Malashock, who’s well aware of the risks dance companies face in the current economy. “We’re expanding our staff. We have a relationship with a booking agent in New York and want to start touring again.”

What’s making this possible is $240,000 in grants — $190,000 to be paid over three years by the James Irvine Foundation plus $25,000 from the Parker Foundation and another $25,000 from longtime dance supporter Danah Fayman.

In addition to many other benefits, the money will fund a strategic planning project.

“We’re looking at building a plan for the next several years and doing what makes sense,” said Malashock, whose “Shadow of Mercy,” set to Leonard Cohen’s music and poetry , will be presented May 31 at downtown’s Lyceum Theatre as part of the Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival. “I’m thrilled. The whole intention is to move the company to a different level.”

Though strong ticket sales and fundraising efforts are necessary to support the company’s annual budget, which is now approximately $600,000, Malashock Dance has the advantage of being based at Dance Place San Diego, one of the nation’s few such facilities.

Since late 2006, the attractive and inviting building at Point Loma’s NTC Promenade has also been home to San Diego Ballet and Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater. While future plans for nearby Luce Auditorium remain uncertain — it’s doubtful that the site could be used exclusively for dance — Dance Place San Diego has succeeded in becoming a highly respected local dance center. It has also enabled Malashock to open a dance school, which now has about 250 students.

“I just love this building,” he said. “It gives a focal point to the community. It’s bringing us together. And we’re being noticed beyond our borders.”

In January of next year, there’ll be even more attention. Malashock said that Dance/USA — the national service organization for professional dance, based in Washington, D.C. — is planning a winter forum for dance company managers that will be held at NTC Promenade, with some activities scheduled for Dance Place.

For local companies, it’s likely to be another leap forward.

Valerie Scher is the SDNN Arts & Entertainment editor.

Tags: SDNN

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 9:11 pm and is filed under Arts & Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.