New frontier in Houston - Regional Dance America festival

Dance Magazine, Dec, 1997 by Doris Hering

REGIONAL DANCE AMERICA REACHED A MILESTONE IN HOUSTON WITH ITS FIRST NATIONAL FESTIVAL.

As I leaned over a balcony and looked down into the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Houston last spring, I saw a veritable sea of dancers, some 1,500 attending Regional Dance America's first national festival. All were attractive, well groomed, quiet, yet singularly alert young people. I thought for a moment of all the dreary newspaper articles and television shows about off-the-track adolescents. If only representatives from every news medium in the country could have been in the presence of these young dancers and--more important--watched them perform. If only the arbiters of opinion could have attended the ceremony initiating the festival's nine performances, perhaps the National Endowment for the Arts would, once and for all, be rescued from its limbo.

How it glittered, and yet there was a gentle tinge of nostalgia. The emcee was Robert Barnett, former artistic director of Atlanta Ballet. As he sketched a brief history of each of the five associations comprising Regional Dance America, the artistic directors of the member companies, more than a hundred strong (some have more than one director), filed proudly on to the stage. At the center of the front row, in a wheelchair, was Alexi Ramov, who cofounded the Northeast Region in 1959. The adjudicators who had selected the works too their places. They were followed by thirty-five festival teachers and accompanists, the association's national board members, the festival hosts, and special guests. Barbara Crockett, cofounder of Sacramento Ballet, shaped the event.

A spirited and tenacious segment of America's dance history was assembled on the Houston stage. Some had been involved in the regional movement since its 1956 inception. Others had founded their companies as recently as the eighties and early nineties; more than 70 percent of the directors were women. All shared the desire to present quality dance to their communities.

The national festival marked a true milepost for RDA, an organization that has faced essentially the same challenge that faced our nation's forefathers: the balance of power. At the very first festival, in 1956 at Atlanta, an informal national advisory board was assemble with Dorothy Alexander, founder of Atlanta Ballet, as its first chairperson. She was adamant at the oar represent but not dominate regions as they formed. At her suggestion, each region had an elected representative on the board.

By 1964, three of the eventual five regions were flourishing. The name, "National Association for Regional Ballet," was selected and registered in New York State, chosen because it was the home of many national funding sources and of other national service organizations. NARB thus acquired an expanded family. The sixties and seventies were such halcyon days for the arts in our land that June Arey, director of the NEA Dance Program, suggested that NARB open a national office to coordinate the activities of the regions, maintain a clearinghouse for information and records, and reaffirm the stature of regional dance (or regional ballet, as it was then called).

In 1971, Nancy Hanks, the immensely gifted NEA chairperson, offered me a choice between two jobs: directing the NEA Dance Program, which was then without leadership, or becoming the first executive director of NARB. I opted for the latter. The following January, NARB opened its first office in the landmark but somewhat decrepit Palace Theatre Building on Broadway. A telephone workers' strike forced administrative assistant Beverly D'Anne and me to take turns finding pay phones. It was fun; so was riding down Broadway in the cab of a truck hauling our second-hand furniture. (NEA budget restrictions didn't allow for new items.)

Our first hurdle was the NARB image. The arts and funding worlds thought of regional performances as dance school recitals, and since there were some member companies of questionable merit, projects had to be devised to raise standards. We didn't want regional dance to be only a bright hope for the future; it had to be a firm reality. Two projects with the most potential were the National Choreography Plan (1976) and the Artistic Directors Seminar (1986). The original NCP was very different from today's version. The national office paid the choreographers' fees and transportation to the companies. With the aid of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and several state and regional arts agencies, forty-six companies received ballets.

One symptom of the decentralization challenge began to emerge. The member companies paid dues to their regions. Part of these dues went to the national office, but it amounted to only 4 percent of the budget. To help offset this, the national board was vastly strengthened, and the associate membership grew. The NEA was still a bulwark.

The entire dance field was gradually changing. So much stress was being placed on administrative stability that administrators began to take precedence over artistic directors. The first Artistic Directors Seminar was organized in 1986 with the assistence of the Mellon Foundation and the L. J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation. A group of directors convened for two weeks at Sarah Lawrence College, and a roster of experts was imported to work with them.