New dance dynasty in the Northwest - News - Christopher Stowell, Oregon Ballet Theatre

Dance Magazine, Feb, 2003 by Martha Ullman West

Oregon Ballet Theatre has announced that, effective July 1, Christopher Stowell will succeed James Canfield as artistic director of the Portland-based troupe. In order to prepare for the 2002-03 season, the new chief began the job on a part-time basis in January.

Stowell, 36, has been very much a part of the West Coast dance world since 1977, when his parents, Francia Russell and Kent Stowell, took over the artistic directorship of Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet. His early training was at PNB's school, followed by a stint at the School of American Ballet. In 1985 he joined San Francisco Ballet, becoming principal dancer in 1990; he retired from dancing in April 2001. Since then, Stowell has been choreographing for opera and ballet companies and has begun staging ballets for the Balanchine Trust.

"Articulate," "thoughtful," "intelligent"--those are the adjectives that his dancing has summoned from critics, who have also praised his meticulously honed technique. Stowell seems to know his own worth without displaying excessive ego. Asked why, with no experience, he thinks he can run a company, he said, "The first attributes [for the job] are enthusiasm, love of the art form, and energy, all qualities of my personality. And the obvious attribute that I have that maybe not everybody has is that I've watched people direct ballet companies my whole life, and you can't undervalue that; not only my parents, obviously. But because of them, I watched how other people direct ballet companies and am more aware of the other side of it."

"Of all the candidates we looked at, he seemed to best fit," said Alison Roper, one of the dancer representatives on the OBT search committee, citing the candidate's West Coast sensibility, listening skills, and high standards for repertoire, live music, and performance. "He excited the dancers by showing them the kind of rep they might get to do, like Paul Taylor's Company B."

Canfield has headed the troupe since 1989, when Pacific Ballet Theatre, which he had directed since 1986, and Ballet Oregon consolidated their resources to become OBT. During his fourteen-year tenure, the former Joffrey Ballet principal has succeeded in building on the foundation begun by his predecessors in the Portland ballet community, Willam Christensen and Jacqueline Schumacher among them, to establish the company as an institution with its own building, twenty dancers, a school, a $4.5 million budget, and a repertoire largely made up of his own work. He resigned last February to pursue other interests, as yet unspecified; his contract ends in June.

Money, and a whole lot of it, must be raised for Stowell to realize his ambitions, which include expanding OBT's school and its dancer roster. Brad Miller, president of OBT's board, nevertheless expressed considerable confidence in Stowell's abilities: "He will not allow himself to fail. He will do what it takes to succeed."